


Never Piss Off a Witch-Goddess

by sifshadowheart



Series: Frey of Asgard [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), Implied Jack/Will relationship, M/M, Non-Canon Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-06 05:28:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12204804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sifshadowheart/pseuds/sifshadowheart
Summary: With Calypso freed from Ogygia by Leo Valdez, Frey's fears come true as he's sent spinning into a world far from home.  5-Part short story that begins directly after Doors of Death.





	1. Trapped

** Never Piss Off a Witch-Goddess **

_Note: The mermaid’s song is called “Mordred’s Lullaby” and it really is quite haunting, especially when you know the story of Arthur and Morgana from Arthurian legend._

**_A Frey of Asgard Story_ **

By Sif Shadowheart

Disclaimer:  Harry Potter and the Pirates of the Carribean franchises each belong to their respective owners.  This is just fan-fiction people, it’s not like I make any money off of this.

 _Author’s Note_ :  This is very much a side-story for Frey of Asgard and you really don’t have to read it if you don’t want to since almost nothing here will matter in the main series.  That said, Frey learns some interesting lessons in this, and has to struggle with one of his worst nightmares coming true – or so he thinks.  Also, if you haven’t ready _Lokison and Doors of Death_ you’re going to be a bit lost since the set-up in this first chapter draws heavily on the events from those stories.

**Part One – Trapped**

Master the Hallows, Thanatos had said.

Sure, right.  Frey thought to himself as he rolled his eyes and shadow-stepped directly from the ruins of Godric’s Hollow and into his warded-to-the hilt practice room in the Peverell Castle dungeons.

Only to jump out of his skin when he discovered he wasn’t nearly as alone as he’d thought.

“Your wards are even better here than back in the day at the Thanatos Cabin.”  Nico di Angelo commented as he leaned against the wall.  “Pretty impressive considering what we were up against back then.  What are you afraid of?”

“A woman scorned.”  Frey shot back with a smirk.  “What are you doing here, Nico?”

The son of Hades held up a scroll with a dark scowl.

“To warn you that that fear might be more on-point than you think…”  He said cryptically.  “Should I continue?”

Frey shrugged a shoulder and started walking towards the bathroom, in desperate need of a shower.

“Can you walk and talk?”

Current appearances aside, Nico actually got along better with Frey than most other half-bloods.

He didn’t judge for one, being the legacy of a death god himself.

And he didn’t hold grudges either…for the most part, over Nico’s attempts to remake his family the way some of the campers from Camp Half-Blood did.

An orphan himself Frey, and Nico might as well be considering how much time he got to spend with his dad, Nico figured the older demigod understood what had driven him to make deals with Minos and Hades alike once upon a time.

Nico waited for Frey to have stripped off and climbed into the shower stall – enjoying every minute of the view even if he did have a major crush on Will Solace, one of the sons of Apollo – then hit him with the bad (for Frey) news.

“Calypso has been freed.”  Nico heard a sound that was either Frey falling on his ass in surprise or him dropping the biggest bar of soap _ever._

“By who?”  Frey choked out a bit later.  “Not Zeus…”

Nico snorted.

Yeah, like King Asshat, only slightly less assholey than the Almight Asshat Kronus himself, who do something like that.

Especially since it would have required a) forgiving Calypso for supporting the first Titanomachy and b) putting one of his favorite bedwarmers in danger.

Nico didn’t begrudge Frey for his open-relationship-fuck-buddies-thing he had with the King of the Gods.  On the contrary, he was rather impressed that the older half-blood had the confidence to take the ultimate man whores of the world (Zeus and his son Apollo) on, though for the sake of not wanting to bleach his brain he was hoping not at the same time.  Add in the fact that Frey had leveraged both his favor in Zeus’s eyes and his heroic endeavors into safety for his children – even from Zeus himself – and there was no doubting Frey’s ice-cold intelligence when it came to using even Zeus as a tool to his advantage.

But unless Frey moved quickly, none of that was going to help him now with a pissed-off goddess on his tail.

“No, not the Olympians at all.”  Nico leaned against the wall, one hand clenching in anger around the scroll that had born the tidings of Calypso’s freedom.  “Another half-blood, this one the son of Hephaestus named Leo Valdez.  He ended up on Ogygia during this last round of _apocalyptic fun_ and swore to free her.  The putz fell in _love_ ,” Nico rolled his eyes.  “And didn’t stop to think.  Twitterpated idiot actually managed it too, which is even more mindboggling.”

“Well…”  Frey plotted it out objectively.  “Ogygia can be found through the Sea of Monsters, so it was always _possible_.  No one ever tried it before, is all.”

“Still,” Nico rapped his knuckled on the frosted glass serpating them.  “Figured you’d appreciate the warning after you helped pull our asses out of the fire at the Doors.  Consider it a debt paid.”

And with that, Nico faded back into the shadow, planning to come back another time and study Frey’s wards further.

Finding him hadn’t been hard after all the training the older half-blood had given him over the last several years in controlling his powers.

Getting through the wards was a different story altogether, and if it weren’t for him being genuinely afraid Frey was going to get unexpectedly bitch-slapped by Calypso’s power any day now, he wouldn’t have bothered.

At least with a warning, Frey might survive her wrath over her father’s slaying…twice and the last for a final time if the stories running around the two Camps were anything to go by.

Bob the Titan apparently had a big mouth that wasn’t just restricted to talking to Nico himself.

Pity.

Otherwise Frey might’ve gotten a pass for slaying Atlas from Calypso, but actually succeeding in _killing_ him?

Guy better have his affairs in order, women – and goddesses in particular – having a special brand of crazy that Nico wanted nothing to do with.

…

That night he went to Malfoy Manor, and told a story to his children, and held them tight.

Lulled by the sweet-dirt scent of childhood, Frey fell asleep there in the nursery of Malfoy Manor, still in his armored jacket and boots.

And then he dreamed once more…

…

_“Hello, Calypso.”  His voice was calm in the face of her, though they had never met, who else could she be?_

_Though her figure was strange, one moment beautiful even for a goddess in pouring silks the changeable colors of the sea, the next appearing as one with dreadlocks and broken teeth._

_“Murderer.”  Her voice sang, the tone as strange as her looks, appearing to be more than one voice.  “Murderer.”_

_“If you’re going to kill me, Calypso.”  Frey remained calm, refusing to show fear before her.  Refusing to give her whatever it was she was after with this game.  “I suggest you rethink your plan.”_

_“Oh no.”  The goddess’s smile was a blade hiding a scourge.  “I won’t kill you.  I am no fool despite what the Olympians think of me.  They are content – for the moment – to overlook the breaking of my prison.  I won’t repay my Leo by forcing them to take…drastic measures against me.  And even newly released, I know whose bed you warm when of a mind.”_

_“If you’re going to torture me with bad dreams, then I’m afraid to say someone has already beaten you to it.”_

_“No, not that either.”  Sea-blue-green changing eyes flashed dark.  “I should not have held you here, but I did not want you to misunderstand to_ whom _your punishment belongs.  You took from me that which even the gods refused to take.  And for that, I have designed a punishment equal to the torment my father suffered before you murdered him.”_

 _“You are a fool.”  Frey snorted, rolling his eyes.  “He didn’t love you – he didn’t love anyone or anything except himself and power._ That _is what killed him eons before I took his head.  You were used.”  His tone was unrelenting.  “Get over it.”_

_“At least one rumor of you is right, Titan-Slayer.”  Calypso spat, flinging one hand out and sending him tumbling back and spinning through empty air, her voice echoing after him.  “Defiant until the very end.”_

…

“Ow.”  Frey sat up after hitting the ground _hard_ , knowing ever before he opened his eyes that that had been no dream he’d been trapped in.

Instead of the scent of his children, he was surrounded and overwhelmed by the smell of the sea…and somehow too much crab.

Rubbing his head, he opened his eyes and stood, a quick glance over himself showing that he was still dressed at least.

That was good.

With the threat of a goddess’s vengeance hanging over his head, his pockets had a few things for just-in-case.

Constant vigilance and all that.

“So.”  A richly accented voice called from behind him once Frey had taken a moment to get his bearings.  Which seemed to be a tropical island of some kind surrounded by the brightest blue water he’d ever seen.  “You ar’ da one me oth’a self wan’ned punished, hmm?”

The dichotomy from the dream was explained as he caught sight of what he could only describe as a sea witch…and if the accent was any clue, one from the days of clippers and yardarms and walking the plank.

“Well…”  Calypso drawled, eyeing him up and down with her sharp dark eyes.  “Ya ar’ a pretty one I’ll give ya dat.”

“Calypso, I presume?”  Frey asked giving a short bow.  “I suppose we’re not anywhere I know, are we?”

Calypso gave a great belly laugh at that.

“No lad tha’ we’re not.”  She answered him, waving a hand at the water and sand and trees.  “Dis be de End o’ the _World_ , me pretty one.  I know no’ why me oth’a self wan’ned you punished, bu’ I gave me word, and me word mus’ be honored.  You ar’ trapped ‘ere, nevah to leave, nevah to age, nevah to die.”

With each never, Frey felt as if he’d taken a blow to the gut as full understanding of what Calypso had wrought upon him.

“Ya powa’s willna work ‘ere.”  Calypso continued.  “You canna leave, unless brough’ away.  An’ at the End o’ the World…”  She cackled a bit in glee.  “Da ships be far and few!”

As she burst into hundreds of crabs that scuttled into the ocean – which rather explained the smell – Frey let himself crumple to his knees.

Who he decided to call Leo’s Calypso had been right after all – he _was_ defiant until the end.

But looking around him at the towering palm trees above him and the scant shrubs and desolate cliffs, he found himself wondering just _why_ he’d held onto his pride so long when this was the cost of unrepentance.

Though given the choice…he couldn’t say he wouldn’t do exactly the same way all over again.

…

Frey didn’t know how long he sat huddled on the hot sand, or how many tears he shed as the thought of his children and his mortal friends crossed his mind.

His father and the other gods didn’t matter so much – one year or a thousand and unless there was another god-killer running around they’d still be there – but his children…Calypso must have been watching him longer than he’d realized, possibly even invading his dreams when he didn’t sleep in his heavily warded Peverell Castle, to learn of the dream that had haunted him so.

Either than, or more of his Gaea-induced visions had had a grain of truth to them than he’d thought.

Grief could cripple him later he decided as the sun began to set and the temperature dropped.

First he had to find shelter, or someplace safe to put up his own.

Gods bless his paranoia, he decided as he found a cave that didn’t have any signs of damp or water marks, high above the shoreline in a cliff facing the setting sun.  Without his healthy desire to prepare for the worst, Calypso might have very well plucked him naked from his bed, instead of fully dressed with more than a few things to make his life on this island go a little smoother thanks to expanded pockets.  _This_ Calypso rather than Leo’s Calypso, had also said that his powers wouldn’t work…but he’d never know until he tried.

If she took after her counterpart’s father, then this Calypso wouldn’t have been prepared for the full force of what he could do…but that would have to wait for another time.

For the moment, he settled for digging out his wizarding tent from his pocket – a modest one compared to most with a single massive room with the bathing facilities curtained off from the rest.

Still, like all wizarding tents, at least it _had_ bathing facilities and a small kitchen that ran on a permanent enchantment – and judging by the sudden coolness he felt around him, whatever enchantments were on the island weren’t designed for inactive magics like the enchantments.

Depending on how much she knew, they might just be designed to keep him there, as his ability to use magical travel was relatively well-known compared to some of his other powers.

They would see.

For now though…he needed to mourn, at least a little, and then he would see about doing all he could to get his ass off this fucking island and back to his home universe and his children before they were dead and gone.

…

Wiping his eyes with the resolution that if this turned into as long of a “punishment” as had been implied, he would turn himself into a Frey blanket burrito one day and cry until he literally had nothing left in him, like a followed out canoe that had been burned clean, Frey frowned over at the clock on the tent call that seemed to be frozen – or moving so slowly it might as well be – when time clearly passed on the island if the sunset as any sign.

Trying a tempus, he gave a smirk as numbers in the same marbled green and purple and black of his magic formed over his right hand.

Wandless was working – or the Elder Wand’s power that he’d bonded on Thanatos’s advice was anyway, it was hard to be sure.

But when he stepped into the shadows, all he accomplished was running into the tent wall.

Well…it had been worth a shot.

Floo, apparating, and even his limited teleportation skills (he and his Far were still working on them since it was very much a more divinity-based power than mortal or half-blood) were all useless.

“Okay,” he breathed out, choking back the fresh wave of grief that crashed over him when all attempts at leaving the island – even turning into his jaguar form and trying to swim for it – were useless.  “Calm.”  He breathed in and out to a mental ten-count, first in English, then Greek, then Norse, then Jotnar, then Aesir, then any other language he could think of until he finally ran dry and the gut-ripping pain had been beaten back again.  “Focus.  What do you know, Frey?”  He asked himself.

He was on an island.

Calypso had sent him there as a punishment.

She said his powers would be useless, but…he snapped out a Patronus the massive dragon that had a tinge of green and his Far’s green eyes glowing in the silvery light clearly proved that wrong.

He couldn’t leave – that one was unfortunately true.

And if she was as vindictive and vengeful as current events would suggest, then he also wasn’t going to age as she’d said either…which was good and bad.

Good was self-explanatory – he wasn’t about to go home, and by Chaos he _would go home_ , only to be decrepit when he managed it.

Bad was…well.

If he wasn’t aging, then he would be stuck at this phase of _becoming_ until he was released – which meant neither his immorality or his Ascension would be providing him with a power-surge to break Calypso’s spellwork…which meant he’d have to do it the hard way.

He was sure it could be done, it would just take time…time that based on the glowing numbers of the tempus when he cast it again and read: 2150, 21 December 1500, he had in spades.

Though _time_ , was ever, was against him when it came to his children.

Grief crushing him and grinding him down, Frey swept one hand through the glowing numbers though noting once more that they did not measure against the tent’s clock, he flung himself face-down onto the single bed.

Tomorrow he would search the island from tip to toe, and spend whatever it took in time to find the secret to his binding.

For now…he needed rest before he lost himself to the tides of grief and anger and rage.

…

The first day wasn’t the worst – not by a long shot.

Later, looking back on it, he would say that most of that first month was a large blur of shock, rage, and sheer bull-headedness.

A week in, he found the ward stone, only to realize that Leo’s Calypso had shared more than he’d thought with this Calypso.

It wasn’t as _simple_ as Frey needed to be taken away from the island and carried beyond the outer reef, which he’d swam all around seeking any weakness in the shielding only to come up empty.

 _Calypso_ was the only one who could free him, by means of destroying the simple silver piece-of-eight that she had tied the wards to and then left lying on the beach.

He was tied to _her_ and her will more than to the island, though with enough time he was certain he could unravel at least a portion of her spellwork.

Searching the island for the wardstone had at least given Frey a good idea of what he was dealing with for however long he remained imprisoned there.  It wasn’t a large island by any means, perhaps a mile around with coconut trees swaying in the ever-present light breeze that carried the tang of salt along with it, bushes and shrubs – barely any grass, mostly sand with rocks and dunes.  Some seafaring birds nested in the cliffs, and a single breed of rodent made its home tunneling in the sand for insects.  But that was it besides the teaming _life_ of the sea.

The outer barrier reef took him an hour to swim too on the short side of the island, with a series of rocks jetting away from the head of the island in a curving arm that met with the far reef on the other side.  There was only a few yards of shore and then reef on the back side of this arching arm, that grew larger into a calm lagoon in the curve of the island.  Fish and turtles and shellfish and coral all lived and grew in the calm lagoon, and gave Frey another form of sustenance other than sea-bird eggs and coconuts when his food supplies inevitably ran out.

Then one morning, one the fiftieth day after he arrived, Frey woke up and rather than get up to explore or work more on the wardstone or even practice his weapons or his magic on the empty beach, he let the grief take him.

…

Two months or two years, he wasn’t sure how long it lasted.

Pain unlike any other he’d faced and conquered before crashed over him as his mind focused with feverish obsession on the picture book filled from his children’s birth until their most recent birthday.

There was Frija’s flashing eyes, here was Asterion’s sweet smile, there was Antioch’s firm stare.

On and on it went, and who knows how long it would have lasted, him trapped in his own mind and reveling in his pain, indulging in nothing but his grief and the barest amount of food to keep him alive in the dull, soul-sapping monotony of his island prison, had things truly stayed the same.

But one night, with the moon shining high and full overhead, while Frey was listlessly gathering a few coconuts to sustain him in the tent, he heard something very much different than the chitter of the small sand mice or the cries of the sea-birds, the words, for they _were_ words, carrying to him on the sea wind.

_“Hush child, the darkness will rise from the deep,_

_And carry you down into sleep,_

_Child, the darkness will rise from the deep,_

_And carry you down into sleep.”_

Frey could sense the magic twined into the words of the women’s voices, but it was _something_ to remined him that he was alive…and that all he could do was pray to any god that might listen that his children might be too when he returned.

Drawn from the tent, he listened with half an ear as he padded from the tent and cave on feet long worn rough and tough from years of training to fight in any condition, his boots left inside not long after his original… _break_ , the effort of putting them on to go out and collect just enough food to survive seeming far too much for so little a thing.

_“Guileless son, I’ll shape your belief,_

_And you’ll always know that your father’s a thief._

_And you won’t understand, the cause of your grief,_

_But you’ll always follow the voices beneath…”_

His powers rose up in response to the silky threat beneath the words, keeping him from hearing the chanting refrain that came next, but he understood the idea anyway.

This was an old magic he was hearing, the sort that in his world hadn’t been used for centuries, not since…

Frey sucked in a breath, step faltering for a moment before springing into a run, arms pumping and legs stretching, feeling the effects of _days-weeks-months-years_ without being properly used…a mistake he wouldn’t make again if he was right about who he _thought_ might be singing.  His feet and instincts led him unerringly out onto the farthest rock that bisected the outer barrier reef, bringing him to a stop just _his_ side of the ward barrier a little more than two-thirds of the way across the wide, flat stone.  He felt his breath fly from him as he saw his tempting singers, all swimming through the waters “At World’s End” as Calypso had called it, tails flashing in the light of the moon, hair wet and dark from sea water, and faces and forms as beautiful as the Veela…though these, he thought, for all they looked to be mermaids were likely closer to Sirens as one spotted him and they turned swimming closer with flashing eyes and sharp teeth _just_ peeking from between lush lips.

He held in a relieved laugh as his powers continued to muffle their song _just_ enough to keep them from enchanting him…likely into becoming their next meal.

“ _Guileless son, your spirit will hate her,_

_The flower who married my brother the traitor._

_And you will expose his puppeteer behavior,_

_As you are the proof that he betrayed her…”_

Sinking down into sitting with his legs tucked beside his hips, Frey watched, eyes rapt, as the one who led the others in song easily came up onto his rock, staring him down with temptation written in every line of her from hair to voice to the teasing flick of her tail sprinkling him with sea water.

They stared at each other, even as she extended a hand to him in wordless offer, her song all the offer most would ever need to come with her – to their deaths.

_“Sleep, child, the darkness will rise from the deep,_

_And carry you down into sleep,_

_Child, the darkness will rise from the deep,_

_And carry you down into sleep.”_

The cross between a mermaid and a siren and a veela – as he knew them from his world – gave a soft hiss and jerked her hand back as it made contact with the barrier, letting the words of the song fade out into the night, leaving only the soft chatter of her fellows and the lapping of the waves against the rock to break the silence of the night.

“Sorry, dove.”  Frey smiled, irony tinging his voice as he held out a hand and placed it palm-side against the clear ward that held him in as totally as it kept her out.  “You’ll have to look elsewhere for a meal this night.”

“This is the sea-witch’s work.”  The mermaid – he decided, just to make things easier…and she did have a tail – noted, eyes calculating even in the dark with only to moon to light her face.  “Has she taken to trapping her lovers now?”

The other mermaids laughed, coming to rest on their folded arms ringing the third of the rock that they could touch without hitting the wards.

“He’s a pretty one.”  One commented.

“A bit dirty though.”  Another remarked with a wrinkle of her nose.

“The sea-witch might like them that way, strange creature.”  Said another.

“The dirt’s my fault I’m afraid.”  Frey interrupted a bit sheepishly, then closed his eyes and blew out a breath at the roughness of his voice from using it for naught but screams and tears for _weeks-months-years_ , time unknown.  “Here…”  He clicked his fingers, the dirt and smell vanishing as if it had never been, hair shining and clean in the light and braided back once more rather than the unkempt mop it was before.  His clothes were a little worse from wear, but there was nothing he could do about that other than use a _repairo_ on them once they wore out, fabrics not taking well to repeated magical repairing.  “This should be better.”

“The sea-witch caught herself a sorcerer.”  Interest flashed anew in dark, nearly _ravenous_ eyes that dragged slowly over the too-thin body revealed by the clean clothes.  “How unusual.”

“I’m her prisoner, actually.”  He said before the mermaid got any _unsavory_ – for him – ideas.  The barrier _should_ protect him…but why tempt fate with the turn his life had taken?  “I killed someone and was given over to Calypso to hold as punishment.”

“Hmm.  Such a waste.”  The mermaid said huskily.  “Still, we have sung for you, sorcerer.  If you won’t…join us, perhaps you might return the favor?”

“Why not.”  Frey shrugged his shoulders and thought a moment then began, thinking it… _fitting_ to send them off with a song that was half a warning and half a temptation – just like them.

 _“Come away little lass_  
Come away to the water  
To the ones that are waiting only for you  
Come away little lass  
Come away to the water  
Away from the life that you always knew  
We are calling to you  
Come away little light  
Come away to the darkness  
In the shade of the night we’ll come looking for you  
Come away little light  
Come away to the darkness  
To the ones appointed to see it through  
We are calling for you  
We are coming for you.”   
  


With a flick of her tail, the mermaid nodded her head in farewell and dove back into the water, leading her sisters away to the sound of his voice crooning after them.

 __  
“Come away little lamb  
Come away to the water  
Give yourself so we might live anew   
Come away little lamb  
Come away to the slaughter   
To the ones appointed to see this through   
We are calling for you  
We are coming for you  
  
Come away little lamb   
Come away to the water  
To the arms that are waiting only for you  
Come away little lamb come away to the slaughter  
To the one appointed to see this through   
We are calling for you  
We are coming for you  
We are coming for you  
We are coming for you.”

“I’m coming for you, Calypso.”  Frey whispered into the light of the moon, letting the salted sea air scour away the tears on his cheeks and his grief – leaving only his rage and defiance behind.  “I _will_ be free.  And I _will_ go home.”

And if anything _, anything_ , had happened to his children while he was going, then Calypso would _pray_ that she had killed him – and risked all the wrath of the gods – instead.

…

There was a peace in quiet rage, Frey found.

In the sweet _thud_ of his daggers finding the tree he used as a target, and the whistle of his sword and spear singing through the air, and the rich crackle and snap of his magic flying through the air and coursing through his blood.

But there was also _purpose_ in it as well, never letting it consume him as he’d lost himself for an endless time in his mind and his grief, but letting it shove him ever forward into, _yes, I’ll re-read that tome from my trunk today_ or running another lap around the island or swimming one more relay from shore to reef.

The skin and bones of the mermaids’ first visit was gone when they came again, about six months later according to his count, heralded by another song that drew Frey – under his own will this time – out to the rocks to speak with them again.

They had sought out Calypso, they told him, asking about the stranger they’d found in her waters, only to be sent away with a snarl by the ill-tempered sea-witch.

That hadn’t sat well with them – especially the leader who introduced herself as Mara – bringing them back to his lonely island for no other reason than to spite her.

Time passed and the mermaids kept coming back, his only company other than the birds and the mice and the pictures of a children and a home that despite the years and then decades and then a century that went by, never grew dim in a mind that had been _designed_ for immortality.

The passing of time had also served to cool the first flush of his fury and the quiet of his rage into ice-cold conviction which refused to waver even as he read all the books in his bottomless trunk for the hundredth time and had coconut and clams for dinner for the thousandth.

His mermaid friends kept coming, brining tales of the outside world for the price of a song, and taught him new ones in turn, Mara and the rest as ageless and undying in the magic of this world as Frey was in his captivity.

And then, one day, they brought news of a _different_ kind, the sort he’d been waiting to hear for a hundred years.

…

“She’s fallen in love.”  Mara said with laughing relish, lounging in “her” place on the sun-warmed rock.  In most places, mermaids would only leave the water under the full moon, when their powers were strongest.  But here, at the end of the world, she knew she had nothing to fear from Frey nor he from her…so long as the barrier remained.

Mara could no more help her nature than Calypso hers…and it was in Mara’s nature to mate and then devour men, the stronger and more beautiful the better.

Frey was both.

Better for both of them that the temptation of each other was just out of reach.

“ _My heart has been pierced by Cupid,”_ Frey sang a line from the most recent song the mermaids had taught him, Mara picking up the second with a laugh.

“ _I disdain all glittering gold_.”

_“Nothing can console me,_

_But my jolly sailor bold.”_   They finished together, Frey then asking: “He would have to be a sailor, for none other loves the sea so much as them.  And to love her is to love the sea.  Am I right?”

“You are.”  Mara idly combed her hair with the – suitably enough – golden comb Frey had conjured for her and then pushed through the barrier with his magic.

Trial and error – and a hell of a lot of practice with nothing better to do – had sharpened his skills with magic considerably.  And with nothing better to do than sit down and figure it out, bonding the Hallows that had followed him into his paradise hell had eventually come to him.  Getting _things_ in and out of the wards was easy enough now.

It was still _himself_ or others that were the problem.

“A pirate captain.”  Mara picked the conversational thread back up sometime later, enjoying the feel of sun on her scales and the sound of Frey’s mellow basso humming “My Jolly Sailor Bold” under his breath.  “She loves him so she charged him with a duty in exchange for making him immortal: ferrying the souls of those lost at sea into the afterlife, safe and sound.  And for every ten years of service, he could have a single day on land with _she who loves him truly_.”  Mara scoffed.  “All it cost was cutting the very heart from his chest and hiding it away on land somewhere.”

Frey whistled, brows arched in surprise.

This Calypso was certainly a cruel one, though not as powerful it seemed as a goddess in his old world, over time he’d noted that the wards that held him had been fashioned by _both_ versions of the sea-witch.

“And?”  He asked.  “Does he love her in return as his empty ribcage would suggest?”

“Who knows?”  Mara shrugged.  “The sea-witch will break him anyway – it’s her nature after all.”

“Yes, yes.”  A grin tugged at his mouth.  “Still…that seems a shame.”

“Mmm.”  Mara sighed, flicking her tail in boredom.  “At least when my sisters and I feast upon a man, we don’t leave him walking around hallow and bitter afterward.”

Frey laughed at that.

“Truer words my vicious one.”  Frey closed his hand and then flicked it open, showing what he’d conjured at a moment’s thought.  “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to track down this sailor of hers and give him a… _gift_ from me when she proves to be just as cruel to those who love her as she is to everyone else, would you?”

Interest sparked in dark eyes.

Boredom, it was true, was the bane of most creatures who lived as long as she.

And Frey had always been good for entertainment if not a hearty meal.

“Do I want to know what it will do?”

“Oh nothing much.”  Frey flicked a smiled at her along with the shining silver piece-of-eight.  “Nothing that will push him one way or another, but might end up helping me get one over on my absentee-captor in the end.”

Mara pouted at being left out of what sounded like an interesting trick, but snapped the silver coin out of the air anyway before it could fall into the sea.

“Only if she betrays him.”  She agreed.  “Otherwise, I’ll bring it back and you can let me in on what wickedness you have planned for the sea-witch.”

That was the other problem of immortal, amoral creatures…they had forever to hold a grudge.

Still, this time it worked in Frey’s favor so he declined to scold her over it as he had in the past when Mara would get into a tiff with one of her sisters.

After bidding Mara a good day and returning to his tent, Frey’s eyes flicked over the calendar tacked to the wall as he always did out of habit, though it had only changed a few times since he arrived in his memory.

The charm must have broken jumping to a new universe.

It was times like this – when the weight of just _how long_ he’d been trapped on this island that he cursed himself for not working harder to finished his new pocket watch after giving the last one – finally done – to his Far as a present, the portable version of a traditional wizarding “family” clock.

…

Time passes once more, the only spot of relief for the godling being the news from Mara – Calypso had proven as faithless as they’d thought, and Mara had snuck the piece of eight onto _The Flying Dutchman_ when the pirate captain – one Davy Jones, who in Frey’s home universe was a half-blood as well, though there seemed to be a lack of demigods in this universe – made his port for his one day when next it came after Calypso’s betrayal.

After that, all Frey had to do was wait, something which he’d become more than accustomed to in this cursed place, giving him a patience for the long-game that otherwise wouldn’t have come to him until much later in his life and well after he’d attained immortality.

Jones’s rage at his betrayal must have been deep-set indeed, for it wasn’t more than a few months after Mara reported her handing-off – as it were – of the silver coin than ragged sails were spotted just beyond the barrier of his island, the ghost ship springing up from the depths like some great monster of myth and legend.

Though it was the captain and crew that were perhaps the monsters, Frey decided after showing off – a little anyway, what else did he have to do for fun anymore? – lifting himself up on a great pillar of ice to bring himself even with Jones as he stood on the prow of the salt-worn ship.

“Hmm.”  Frey cocked his head to the side, eyeing the tentacles that marred what must have been a handsome sea-faring face at one point.  “There is nothing quite like the wrath of a woman scorned, is there, Captain Jones?”

“How do you know me?”  Jones spat at the magical youth before him.  He’d had his fill of magical beings, and was still searching for a way to repay Calypso for her treachery when an enchanted coin had drawn him here, Jones having no rest until he’d turned his ship to the End of the World, one of the places he would have ever chosen to willingly go as it is one of _her_ places of power.  “And why have you bespelled me?”

“Oh, you were bespelled long before my silver called you here.”  Frey smirked knowingly, eyeing the ship and crew for emphasis.  “Calypso doesn’t take kindly to those who break their word to her, hypocrite that she is, as you’ve learned the hard way from the stories the waves bring me.  And I’ve my own _punishment_ ,” he held out his arms to encompass the isolated isle behind him.  “To weather.  At least you’ve the freedom of the seas.”

“What do you want of me?”  Jones tried again.  There had to be something.  Why else would this creature call him hence?

“Ah.”  Frey sighed, rolling his head back to stare up at the sky, letting the cold of the ice seeping into the soles of his feet.  “The question, Captain Jones, should be: what do you want of _me_?”  Frey told him honestly.  “That’s why you’re here isn’t it?  You seek something, and the enchantment on that coin prompted you to come to the one place and person that could help you find it.”  Green eyes burned with power and banked rage as he lifted his head back to face the damned captain of _The Flying Dutchman_.  “Speak.  I will listen.”

“And the cost?”

Frey smiled wickedly.  “Nothing you won’t be willing to give.  After all…I may be trapped, but Calypso didn’t cause me to cut the very heart from my chest.”

Jones snarled at the reminder, while puzzled inside at just _how_ well informed the creature was.

“There is a way to bind her,” though it took him reading through his whole library trunk, and more than a little Arithmancy to figure it out.  “Trap her in a single form and diminish much of her power, power that she has misused and corrupted.”

“Tell me.”  Jones breathed, bracing his hands and leaning forward.

“I was hoping you would say that.”  Frey’s eyes flashed with triumph.  “My only condition is thus.”  With a flourish of his hand – more for visual effect than any real need – he floated another piece of eight, the one that held the wards keeping him from using his powers to simply step into shadow and away, over to spin slowly before Jones’s eyes.  “The ritual you shall give to whoever you would rather bear the brunt of her fury than you – because make no mistake, should she ever be freed her fury will be terrible to behold – must use this piece of eight as part of the spell.  Agreed?”

A dirty hand snapped out and plucked the silver coin from the air before he could convince himself to change his mind.

“Aye.  It shall be done – just as you ask.”

“Excellent.”

…

Author’s Note 2: Frey’s song to the mermaids is “Come Away to the Water” from the Hunger Games.


	2. Two - Bound

** Never Piss Off a Witch-Goddess **

Author’s Note: Credit where it’s due, some of the dialogue in this chapter comes straight from the movie _Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End_.  Really if it’s not broke, why fix it?

**Part Two: Bound**

_Isle de la Soledad, One Hundred and Fifty Years Later_

“The King and his men stole the Queen from her bed.”  Frey sang to himself, a nasty habit he’d picked up from Mara and her sister mermaids.  “And bound her in her bones…”

He gave a wicked chuckle, remembering the very _irate_ form of the newly made “Tia Dalma” when she had made it to his island prison after the first “Brethren Court” had struck its bargain with Jones, in turn fulfilling Jones’s with Frey.

Schemes within plans within plots.

Calypso knew how to win herself free.

The problem was how long it would take her to eventually cave, as know freeing herself also meant freeing _him_ , thanks to Jones making good on his end of the bargain.

“The seas be ours, and by my powers…”  Frey changed up the lyrics a tad.  “Where they will, they roam.”

Eyes narrowed on the horizon, for Mara had brought stranger-than-usual news with her when last she came to visit, news of pirates being rounded up and hanged by the dozens – or even those who were thought to consort with pirates – and the death of the Kraken, a gift from Frey to Jones for a job well done, news that made Frey think that even Calypso had tired of her petty intransience as he had two centuries ago.

All that waited, was for Frey to spot sails on the horizon, or for the wards to break.

Though given how much he’d limited her power with the spell he’d passed along to the captain of the _Dutchman_ , he was willing to bet she’d come to him for help making sure they _both_ got free of the other’s traps.

It was all just a matter of timing and having the proper _leverage_.

…

_The HMS Endeavor, the Caribbean_

“Nine pieces of eight.”  Lord Cutler Beckett mused.  “What would be the significance of _that_ I wonder?”

“What does it matter, sir?”  His man Mercer asked.  “Nothing can stop the Armada, not with the _Dutchman_ in the lead.”

Icy-blue eyes pinned Mercer contemptuously.

“Nothing we _know of_.”  Beckett chided him.  “Did your new friend in Singapore happen to tell you the location of where the Brethren Court was meeting?”

“He was mum on that, sir.”

“Of course he was.”

…

_The Hai Peng, waters south of Singapore_

“Why doesn’t that woman just bring Jack back, the same way she brought back Barbossa?”  Pintel muttered to Ragetti.

“Because.”  Tia Dalma interrupted their grousing, many ears turning to listen.  “Barbossa was merely _dead_.  Jack Sparrow was _taken_ , body and soul…not to a place of death but of punishment.”  Her dark eyes turned to the east, where the sight of water breaking on rocks had just come into sight.  “And we will need help to bring ‘im and the Black Pearl from the depths of Davy Jones’s locker.”

“What sort of help, would that be then?”  Barbossa asked, eyes narrowed on her, not trusting the sea-witch farther than he could throw her, especially now that he knew just _who_ she was.

Tia Dalma laughed bitterly.

“The kind that fears no man or god, nor the type of Davy Jones.”  She said cryptically, then pointed.  “There.”  She said with certainty as Will leaned over the navigational charts, plotting their course to the farthest gate.  “That be where we’ll find us some help.”

“How do you know?”  Elizabeth asked, voice low as her eyes traced over the island that was coming into sight in full.  “That he’ll be willing to help us?”

“Because.”  Tia Dalma drawled.  “I was the one who trapped ‘im ‘ere, many years ago.  An’ I am the only one that can set ‘im free.  He will help.”  She said with certainty.  “Da only question be of da _cost_.”

…

_Isla de la Soledad_

“Welcome.”  Frey sneered at the form of Tia Dalma, directing his words towards the ragged group of misfits she’d dragged along with her to confront him.  “To the island of desolation.  What the fuck do you want, _witch?”_

“Well,” Elizabeth said in an aside to Will.  “At least she wasn’t lying about there being someone here.”

Though _someone_ was a bit of an understatement as in a reprise of his feat upon meeting Davy Jones, Frey had made a pillar of ice to stand equal to the small crew of the Asian-built ship.

“No.”  Will said shortly, wary of this stranger.  “Though it makes me wonder just who she’s brought us to meet, if he’s as powerful as she says…why didn’t he just _leave_.”

“Because I was trapped.”  Frey snapped at the pretty pirate, even as he forcibly shoved both his libido and his rage down.  Two hundred and fifty years without a partner other than his own hand had done little to improve Frey’s temper, though it had done wonders for his patience.  “By _her_ , and for a slight not her own.”

“Per’aps so.”  Calypso admitted, biting back more than a few scathing remarks.  “But _you_ interfered wit’ t’ings not of your own as _well_ , ‘alf-blood.  And at jus’ a great a cost.”

“To you, maybe.”  Frey shrugged.  “I wasn’t the idiot who made Davy Jones immortal was I?  Nor did I form the Brethren Court.  I simply…played a bit.”  He sighed, putting on a mournful pout for his audience.  “The island is well named, and other than a mermaid pod or two, there was little else to entertain.”

“Mermaids?”  Pintel and Ragetti both perked up in unison, liking the quicksilver flesh of a smile from the stranger…even if he was some sort of powerful sorcerer as the sea-witch said and his own display had confirmed.

“Enough of that.”  Barbossa waved a hand and stepped forward.  “And of your squabbles over slights.  We have come to offer you your freedom, sorcerer.”

“What do you want in return.”  Frey arched a brow.

“You’ll help us retrieve Jack Sparrow from Davy Jones’s Locker.”  Will stepped in as well after exchanging a glance with Barbossa.  “And you’ll have your freedom.”

“Haven’t let them in on the secret, have you sea-witch?”  Frey tsked at the still form of the bound Calypso.  “Tsk tsk.  Not good for making allies.  It’s not so simple as that, now is it, witch?”

“No, tha’ it isn’t.”  Tia Dalma spoke, her voice quiet and tense.  “But you know already wha’ it is I wan’, so da question becomes: is it worth it?”

Frey hummed under his breath, keeping the victorious grin from showing by mere force of will.

“Lift the spell binding me to the island.”  He told her, eyes flashing a warning.  “I know you can do that much without the anchor.”

“Very well.”  Tia Dalma nodded and extended her hand then slit it with a razor-sharp dagger from her hip, allowing the blood to pool in her palm before pressing it to the invisible dome that suddenly sprang into shimmering sight at contact with her blood before giving an ominous crack and shattering.  “You be free.  Though your powa’s remain bound until the other ‘alf of the payment is made.”

“In that case…”  Frey held out one hand, summoning his things from the cave with little thought, having already packed them when the sight of sails appeared on the horizon.  “When do we begin?”

“Now.”  Barbossa ordered as the sorcerer slung one leg over the rail and climbed aboard.

Big fucker, that was for sure, bigger by far than he’d looked standing on a pillar of ice and with a barrier between them.

Will produced the charts that he’d partially deciphered as Frey settled down to sit on the prow of the ship, the godling listening to the tale of the green flash and pretending that his jailor wasn’t standing just a few feet away and begging by her very presence for him to wrap his arms around her currently mortal neck and just _squeeze_.

“Trust me.”  Barbossa told his crew, Frey nodding along.  “It’s not getting to the land of the dead that’s the problem – it’s getting back.”

…

That night Frey hummed along with the strains of Calypso’s lullaby from her locket, watching as two of the crew – engaged and the friends of this “Captain Jack Sparrow” from what he’d been told by a chatty Master Gibbs and misters Pintel and Ragetti – had a bit of a tiff…only to stand when Calypso went to confront the man, Will.

“For what we want most.”  She warned him.  “There must be a cost to be paid in the end.”

“You would know all about that, wouldn’t you?”  He asked from behind her, locking eyes with the deep dark brown eyes that seemed to war between indecision and conviction from one moment to the next.  This Will Turner was an interesting soul.  His Elizabeth on the other hand was simply swimming with guilt.

Had she betrayed her fiancé, or was there something else going on?

Either way, he was starting to both enjoy and despise having others with all their angst and drama surrounding him again, for the entertainment value if nothing else.

“Tell me, Tia.”  Frey propped one shoulder against the forward mast, Will brushing passed him with a nod for saving him from the witch, even as the ship began to speed up and the crew getting into a tizzy even as Barbossa ordered them to stay the course as the end of the world – the farthest gate – came into view.  “Was it worth it, betraying him who loved you?  I’ve never done it you see.”  Frey twisted the knife.  “Thought I might try it out sometime.”

“You would have to have a ‘eart _first_.”  She spat at him.  “You don’ understand love, ‘ow can you when you love no one but yourself?”

“Ahh…”  Frey’s smiled turned as sharp as Will’s cutlass.  “That’s where you’re wrong, dear.  I’ve loved.  Deeper and with more feeling than a fickle being like you could ever imagine.”

“Lies.”  Calypso snapped.  “I saw your ‘eart when you were given to me and it were _untouched_.”

“Lies.”  He whispered back.  “Blinded by your cruelty, how could you even begin to see or understand...”  His teeth flashed, ready to shift and draw blood even as the ship tipped over the edge of the world.  “After all… _it’s in your nature_.”

…

_Davy Jones’s Locker_

Captain Jack Sparrow knew quite well that he had lost his mind, though his hallucinations had been fun…at first.

However, that did not mean that he was about to lose his beloved _Black Pearl_ to an army of creeping, crawling crabs!

Running full-tilt after his ship, he regained his place aboard, holding steady on the rail with one hand on the rigging, even as the creatures bore him over the crest of a final dune and into the sea.

Though he would admit, the motley crew of new-and-improved hallucinations were a nice touch of authenticity to add to his delusions.

Especially as they brought more than one stranger with them, like a delusion tea party or raid.

Though leave it to that wench of a distressing damsel to ruin a good tea raid party.

“Jack.”  She whispered, with far too much pain for a backstabbing bit o’ muslin who left him to die in one of the worst ways the Seven Seas had to offer.  “We’re really here.”

Backing away slowly, he spun back to Mister Gibbs.

“The Locker, you say?”

“Aye.”

“We’ve come to _rescue_ you.”  Elizabeth followed and proclaimed…which he found _particularly_ rich coming from her.

With a slow spin back around, Jack sauntered back over to the murderess.

“Have you now?”  He smirked, eyes cold and dangerous.  “Seems to me that as I’m the one with a ship, you lot.”  He waved idly over the random assortment of strangeness Hector had cobbled together, his eyes lighting – and then slowly dragging with genuine appreciation – on what was probably one of the cleanest men he’d seen in all his life…though the actual beauty of the ebony-haired vision didn’t hurt his instant attraction either.  “Are the ones in need of rescuing, and I don’t know that I’m in the _mood_.”

So there.

Hector’s own delusions aside, the news he was bombarded with by the charming pair of murderess and sorceress…and poor sweet William, speaking of ebony haired beauties, Jack still wouldn’t mind showing the lad-now-man the _joys_ of piracy, was less than heartening.

Almost made one wanting to rethink returning from the dead… _almost_.

Though the new pretty – and were those eyes real?  Hard to believe with the vibrant color, the first time he’d seen anything approaching _living_ in…however long he’d been trapped in the Locker – stayed quiet and just watched with those verdant eyes that didn’t miss a trick.

“The Brethren Court ‘as been called.”  Tia finished with as Jack brushed them off.

“I leave you people alone for a minute and look at what happens!”  He declared with half-genuine exasperation and half-sarcasm, making those enchanting eyes light with humor.  “Everything’s gone to pot!”

“Aye, Jack the world needs you back somethin’ fierce!”

Ah good Mister Gibbs.

“And you need a crew.”  And there was the come-down-to-Earth moment provided by sweet William as always.

Though better him than his murderess.

“Why should I sail with any of _you_?”  Jack demanded, eyes raking contemptuously over Barbossa, Tia Dalma, sweet William and his murderess.  “Four of you tried to kill me in the past, _one_ of you succeeded.”

Oh ho.  He smirked viciously as the others turned to stare at Elizabeth in disbelief.

“Oh, oh no.”  He chuckled.  “She hasn’t told you.  You’ll have plenty to talk about here then, won’t you?”

Jack sauntered over to Tia.

“As for you…”

“We’re a joint combination.”  A smooth, rich voice told him, the green-eyed beauty moving to the front, Jack watching in calculation as the others rippled and parted before him with no little amount of fear.  “I’m afraid, where she goes, _I_ go.”

“Replaced me have ya, Tia me darling?”  Jack pouted a bit as Tia Dalma rolled her eyes and the green-eyed beauty laughed.

“Not hardly.  Ours is a _professional_ relationship you might say.”  Frey gave a flourishing bow.  “Harry Black,” he shot a warning look at Calypso when it looked like she might interject.  “At your service, Captain Sparrow.”

“Well…”  Jack drawled, acknowledging the heat in those eyes for what it was.  “One can only hope.  You’re both in.”

Frey arched a brow at the disbelieving looks he got from the “four who tried to kill me in the past” according to Jack.

He’s been involuntarily celibate for two and a half centuries for the love of Chaos!

A little soap and water – or some magic – and Jack would make for an adequate start to scratching that particular itch.

Though if the promising look in dark eyes was any measure, adequate might be understating the issue.

…

Jack was more than a little put out over Hector barging in and taking over, but a sultry glance from under black lashes followed by a trip to the Captain’s cabin – where Jack had definitely learned there was more to Harry Black than met the eye when he had them both stripped and clean in a twinkling of his rich emerald eyes – had him in much better spirits as they laid in the rich velvet bedcovers, dusk settling over the Sea of Souls.

“Professional relationship you said.”  Jack murmured with a laugh as the rum bottle and two glasses came floating over from the side table.  “No need to ask what profession, then.  You’d be a sorcerer, love?”

“Hmm.”  Frey hummed noncommittally, feeling warm and loose and _alive_ for the first time in longer than he could remember.  “Of a sort.  And you’re a pirate lord.”  Emerald eyes drifted to the silver coin that tipped one of Jack’s braids.

Fate does so love to be ironic.

The meddling bitch.

“Aye, that I am.”  Jack toasted the sorcerer with his rum and then quaffed it.  “Captain of the _Black Pearl_ , been to places most don’t even believe exist and lived – after a fashion – to tell the tale.  And you, love?”  Jack arched a dark brow.  “What’s your story?  Hear them up on deck tell it, you’re some sort of fierce magical beastie that Tia locked away for the good of all mankind.  But that seems a bit…”  Jack trailed his eyes over scars and tattoos, his new bedmate having more of the former and less of the latter than himself, though he felt that each of the tattoos and marks on that delicious golden body told a story.  “Far-fetched to me.”

“Magical I’ll give you.”  Frey rose to his feet and stretched, reveling in being able to just _be_ somewhere other than the island and not have that hot-hard- _need_ riding him every moment of the day.

Calypso could’ve at least _waited_ until he wasn’t in the midst of _becoming_ to kidnap him.

Though knowing her, she had likely – and wisely – decided to strike before he could become overly prepared for her.

“Fierce, as well.”  Jack smirked, rubbing his thumb over the deep purple love-bite Harry had given him when during their second round it was the other man’s turn to ride Jack into the mattress.  “But from where I’m laying…”  Hot eyes trailed over flesh that he’d given a damn good try at marking up.  “The only thing gained by locking someone like _you_ away would be to have you at me beck and call.”

Frey laughed appreciatively at that then said, even as his magical senses tingled in ways they hadn’t since being dragged to this backwater world:

“Charming offer, but I’ll have to pass Jack.”  Frey snapped his fingers, well used to doing everything wandless, and having himself clean and redressed in a moment as the dark wash of violent death crashed over him.  “We’re needed on deck.”

They arrived just in time to hear the end of Tia’s words about Davy Jones, even as Calypso and Frey’s gazes met – this once at least – in complete agreement once he saw the souls left to drift through the sea until they reached the other side.

“Now there’s boats coming.”

Frey leaned on the railing, Jack at his side, both keeping a silent vigil while Will stopped Gibbs from using the musket he loaded in instinctive reaction.

“They won’t hurt us.”  Will assured the twitchy first mate, then checked with Tia Dalma.  “Am I right?”

“We are as ghosts to dem.”  She nodded in mournful agreement, even as Frey added:

“So long as we don’t draw their ire.”

Calypso huffed by bowed to his greater knowledge of death and spirits.

He was the product of a Death god after all.

He would know.

“How do you know that?”  Jack asked, frowning a bit.

“Experience.”  He said cryptically.

“Father?”  Elizabeth gasped and more than one man onboard the _Black Pearl_ cursed under their breath.  “We’ve made it back!  Father!”

“Elizabeth…”  Will grasped for her only to have her pull away and dart further down the rail as her father’s dinghy continued to drift on.

“Elizabeth.”  Frey said commandingly, drawing her hopeful gaze to him.  A gaze he crushed with his next stoic words.  “We haven’t made it back.”

Then Weatherby, Elizabeth’s father, finally noticed them at her shout and asked dazedly:

“Elizabeth, are you dead?”

“No,” she said, voice a whimper.  “No, I’m not.”

“Oh good.”  Her father nodded, looking back towards… _on_.  “I think I am.”

“Father we’ll pull you aboard, somebody cast a line!”

“There was this…heart.”

Frey’s eyes sharpened, taking in the couple of souls listening to Weatherby’s tale, including his newest lover, with focused intent.

“I learned that if you stabbed the heart, you must replace it.  _The Dutchman_ must have a Captain.”  Weatherby’s voice was a sigh.  “A silly thing to die for…”

Calypso went to speak, only to be intercepted by Frey who shook his head once, sharply.

She’d down enough damage to one good pirate already.

If he had his way, she’d leave these ones alone…and let them make their own mistakes, as both of _them_ had.

“Take the line!”  Elizabeth cried, Weatherby paying her no mind.

“I’m so proud of you…Elizabeth.”

“Take the line!”  Elizabeth cried and screamed, rushing towards the rail.

“She must not leave the ship!”  Calypso warned, Will darting over and around the others to haul her back into his arms even as she struggled.

“I’ll give your love to your mother…shall I.”

Holding his fiancé in his arms, Will looked over at the incongruous pair of Frey and Calypso as Jack moved to join them, woken from his brief daydream.

“Is there a way?”

Calypso shook her head as Frey told them: “He’s at peace.”

…

As the sun rose between world, it drew Frey from Jack’s arms, out to stare across the trackless sea between the realms of the living and the dead.

“Does Barbossa know just who he’s dealing with?”  Frey asked Calypso as he joined her at the rail.

“He t’inks he knows.”  She answered with a wicked smirk, making Frey laugh.

Former prisoner or not, he thought if given time he’d come to enjoy the Calypso of this world.

Too bad he had other plans, and a bargain to make good on.

Good thing for all of them that he was a bit of an expert when it came to realms of the dead thanks to Thanatos and his studies growing up at Camp Half-Blood and even Hogwarts.

“Take my hand.”  He told her, even as Jack and several others stumbled out onto the deck for the day.  “My powers are still bound to you.  This won’t work any other way.”

“What are you doing?”  Jack asked, eyes narrowed on the pair thoughtfully.

Frey smirked over his shoulder at the lusty pirate who he was enjoying very much – for the moment.

“Proving just _why_ Tia made the bargain she did.”  Frey turned back and grasped onto the dark hand offered him, wrapping the other around some nearby rigging.  “Everyone hold on…it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything close to this.”

“What are you _doing?”_ Elizabeth demanded, even as she – and everyone else – obeyed the order.

“Getting us the fuck out of here, princess.”  Frey shot back.  “Now I’m serious…hold on unless you fancy being dropped between worlds.”

Power swelled around the pair at the rail, even as it made it hard for the others to breath, wrapping around the _Black Pearl_.

And then between one moment and the next, they were gone.

…

“Where ‘ave you taken us?”  Calypso asked even as she tugged her hand away and stared at the sea, the green flash of light no more than an afterimage on their eyelids, Frey dropping onto his hands and knees with a pant.

“Fuck if I know.”  Frey snarled back at her.  “I’m not from this place, _remember_?  I just picked some open ocean in the Caribbean and dropped us there.  Can I get a bloody thank you now?”

“I don’t know what that just was.”  Jack pointed out, staring up at the stars that were starting to peak out from behind the clouds.  “But I do know we’re in the right place – figuratively speaking.”  He pointed to the sky, and the rather obvious constellations that had been missing in the Sea of Souls.  “Savvy?”

“We need provisions.”  Gibbs pointed out after tipping back a nearly empty bottle of rum.  “Or we’ll never make it to the meeting of the Court or anywhere else either.”

 _That_ apparently was the signal for the less-than- _friendly_ pirates to hold each other at pistol-point while Frey just facepalmed and muttered “wet powder” to a snickering Tia Dalma.

A fact which they didn’t figure out until _after_ Jack tried to shoot Hector in the face for pointing out that if Jack was the last pirate then he’d also be alone while facing Jones and Beckett.

“I _will_ not be going back to the Locker, mate.”  Jack swore.  “You can count on that.”

…

Fresh water spring located, and a compromised proposed and accepted by Will later, and they had a plan and a day’s sail to reach it.

Which gave Frey another night to… _enjoy_ Jack, as he doubted this quiet time would continue much longer.

Frey turned out to be more right than he knew.

…

Green eyes stared out at the shore, an easy spell bringing Barbossa’s words to Jack as the pair stood before the corpse of the Kraken to his ears, even as Will led Sao Feng’s men in mutiny behind him.

“Still thinkin’ of runnin’ Jack?”  Barbossa asked the stone-faced scalawag.  “Think you can out run the world?  You know the problem of bein’ the last of anythin’?  Soon there’s none left a’tall.”

It didn’t take Jack but a moment to respond, bringing a smile to his watcher’s face, as Frey flung back a hand and had grabbed the maggoty little bastard of a pirate who’d prodded him in the back with a cutlass by the throat and tossed him away with absent ease.

“Sometimes things come back mate, we’re livin’ proof, you an’ me.”

“Aye, but that’s a gamble of long odds, ain’t it?  There’s never a guarantee of comin’ back.  But passin’ on?  That’s dead certain.”

“Summoning the Brethren Court, then is it?”

“It’s our only hope lad.”

Frey was finally forced to pay attention to what was going on around him when turncoat Turner himself came up to confront him.

“What was the price?”  Frey asked before Will could speak, green eyes nonjudgmental.

“What?”

“Every pirate has a price.”  Frey commented, arching a brow as storms gathered in dark brown eyes.  “What was yours?”

“That’s none of your affair.”

“If it interferes with my bargain, it’s _always_ my affair.”  Frey shot back, cool as a cucumber even as the mutineers started to gather behind Turner, having locked away the others including Tia Dalma.

“I…”  Will trailed off as Sao Feng’s ship rounded the island, Frey smirked at the pretty – if very misguided – pirate before him.

“Be careful, pretty.”  Frey warned, settling down with his back against the mast.  He wasn’t about to go down to the brig, but made no move to fight them off when they shackled him in place.  “You know the trouble with making deals with devils?”  He smirked.  “They always get their due.”

…

Jack climbed aboard the _Pearl_ , hiding – just a little – behind Hector as his eyes scanned who was in chains, spotting Harry leaning, casually at that, against the rail and bound by one wrist.

The green-eyed minx shot him a wink, and held his “bound” hand up to his face lifting a finger in a shushing motion.

At least Jack had that going for him.

Though given the nature of Sao Feng’s grudge, things weren’t looking that great…even if William turning turncoat was more than a little entertaining…if not just down-right sad.

Poor, sweet William.

Still going to sea to find his father, even after Bootstrap had bargained away what little there was left of his freedom to save his son’s irritating hide.

However, of all the less-than-wonderful things that happened that day (waking up to a frankly _fantastic_ blow job from Harry aside) his personal low had to be the sinking feeling in his gut when Sao Feng dragged him to the far rail and showed him the imminent arrival of the _HMS Endeavor_.

…

 


	3. Three

** Never Piss Off a Witch-Goddess **

Again, with the excellent dialogue from the movie, chunks of this are taken straight from the screen.

**Part Three: Bargains Struck**

While Jack was busy bargaining for his life with Beckett, Frey was watching another bargain unfold before his eyes.

Rising to his feet, and knocking out – quietly – a few of the East India Trading Company men along the way, Frey added his two cents to the simmering cauldron of discontent.

“It’s true.”  He told Sao Feng, leaving out a few _pertinent_ details.  Not that he had anything against Elizabeth Swann, he just preferred to keep Calypso’s true identity as secret as he could for as long as he could, lest Jones accuse him on not keeping up his side of the bargain struck so long ago.

Which was hogwash, Frey gave him information and Jones chose what to do with it.

Anything that came after was on the cursed pirate captain, not Frey.

“Pardon?”  Elizabeth turned towards the sorcerer incredulously, while Sao Feng eyed the stranger with distrust.

“I was trapped by Calypso.”  He told the Pirate Lord of Singapore.  “It wasn’t until Barbossa and this ship arrived at World’s End that I was able to be freed.  She’s real.  And they truly plan to free her.”

“You don’t sound in favor of this plan.”  Sao Feng pointed out, eyes narrowed.  “One can’t help but ask _why?”_

“Calypso is powerful.”  Frey shrugged.  “Wise men should be wary of her.  But then.”  He smirked and looked around the small circle.  “I’m not talking to wise men, am I?  But _pirates_.”

“The girl goes with me.”  Sao Fend demanded, eyes tracing over her face with hunger.

“Out of the question.”  Will seethed.

Barbossa stepped in to take back the reins of the situation only to find out that Elizabeth had well and truly taken them from his hands.

“Done.”  She said after a moment, having picked up as Barbossa and the sorcerer both had that Sao Feng thought her Calypso…which should buy her at least a little protection from the pirate lord.

“Undone,” Will snapped, turning to his fiancé.  “Elizabeth, they’re pirates.”  He pointed out.

Frey snorted.  “As if _that_ is news to anyone.”

“I think I am more than experienced in dealing with _pirates_.”  She slapped her bound hands against Will’s chest.

“Then…”  Barbossa leaned in.  “We have an accord.”

Elizabeth and Sao Fend nodded, Will protested, and Frey summed it all up with a roll of his eyes, even as he summoned his sword and began hacking his way through the navy-men in their uniforms.

At least it was easy – for the most part – to tell friend from foe.

Elizabeth went off with Sao Feng, while Barbossa engaged Beckett’s second in command, and Frey relieved a little of his boredom by seeing who many of the British Navy’s “honest” men he could make jump overboard in sheer terror.

It wasn’t very heroic of him, but given how he’d spent the last twenty-five decades he felt himself being due a rash of unheroic behavior.

And watching Jack pull off another one of his insane stunts did nothing but make him smile.

“And _that_ ,” Jack said once they were all staring at him as he hopped down from the upper deck where he’d landed on his swing from the _Endeavor_ , “was without a _single_ drop of rum.”

Hilarity aside, Jack ordered Will to the brig, and the _Pearl_ once more set sail for Shipwreck Cove.

…

“You don’t seem very worried.”  Jack wouldn’t be, well, _Jack_ if he didn’t point it out.  He continued when Harry just looked down at where Jack was sprawled across the big bastard’s chest and arched a brow.  “About Barbossa’s plans to free Calypso.  She imprisoned you.  Why aren’t you worried?”

“I’ve faced and killed far worse than a single love-struck goddess with a hygiene problem.”  Frey said with brutal honesty.  “As for her being freed, well.”  He smiled, eyes flashing with cold fire.  “I’ve been counting on it ever since I gave the spell to bind her to Davy Jones.”

Jack reared back, shocked to his bones for the first time in a long time.

“You?”  He spluttered.  “But Calypso was bound by the first Brethren Court, that had to be…”

“A hundred and fifty years ago.”  Frey supplied, stretching his arms over head and resting them lightly against the pillows.  “Give or take.”

Calculation entered dark brown eyes, even as his lover’s face took on a challenging cast.

“I’ve known some blokes to beat Death, love, but you…”  Jack whistled.  “You wear your years _very_ well.”

Still…

“You’re wondering why I told you.”  Frey commented with the eerie perceptiveness that any Master Occlumense would recognize as passive Legilimancy.  “Simple – it’s not that I trust you.  It’s that I don’t fear her.  Bargains once struck being those like her and I are binding.  Even if she wanted to there’s nothing she could do to me now that she’s bound to free me…and even when I was first bound I was too powerful for her to take alone.  My powers have only grown since then.”  He chuckled.  “I don’t fear Calypso.  On the contrary – between the two of us, _she_ should fear _me.”_

Well, when he put it that way…

“Seems as I’ve picked the right side then, eh?”  Jack rolled out of bed, throwing on some clothes.

“Off to make trouble?”  Frey asked, snuggling down further into the bed, absolutely zero plans of rising until they reached Shipwreck Cove.

“Always, love.  Always.”

…

“Will Turner is missing from the brig.”  Frey commented the next morning as he handed Jack a strip of dried meat to break his fast.  “You wouldn’t know anything about that now, would you?”

“Hmm?”  Jack played oblivious as they watched Calypso and Barbossa fight.  “Aren’t you going to do something about that?”

Frey snorted.

“Hardly.  I’m bound to help free her from her human form, not the brig.”  The taller man stretched, enjoying the play of muscles just a bit sore from his _play_ with Jack the night before once the other man had returned from presumably sending Turner off to make a deal of his own with Beckett.

All the back and forth between the pirates was at least interesting, more so than the dry politics of the Wizengamot.

“And if Barbossa tries to lock you up as well?”  Jack leaned back and fiddled with the piece of eight – the same that had he but known it was the key to unlocking the full measure of Frey’s current power – threaded into his hair.

“Barbossa’s not a stupid man.”  Frey said, then walked away, ready to do some exercises or maybe con someone into sparring him.

Isolation may have made for a hell of a lot of practice, but it was short on sparring partners.

…

A few nights later had them making port at Shipwreck Cove and Frey going with Jack and Barbossa as well as some of the others to the Brethren Court.

It seemed watching him fillet honest sailors like trout had made a positive impression on the pirates.

Surprise, surprise.

An actual surprise arrived in the form of one “Captain” Elizabeth Swann with the news that Sao Feng was dead and that there was a traitor among the ranks of the pirates, which thanks to Jack’s machinations pointed oh-so-conveniently to one William Turner.

Frey _did_ however, enjoy a good brawl, even if it had terrible timing as Frey felt the wards he’d set around the brig go off.

Shooting a glance at Jack, Frey melted away – which was frustrating beyond measure that he could use his powers to go to _her_ and not anywhere else without her consent – to keep an eye on the mercurial goddess.

Coming back with news of what Calypso had planned only to be met with news that Elizabeth Swann had been made the King of the Brethren Court and ordered them to war instead of releasing Calypso was _not_ part of his plan.

“So close, and yet,” Captain Edward Teague murmured after his son had walked away, sensing the sorcerer that was still lurking in the shadows.  “Must be grating.”

“You have _no_ idea.”  Frey told him, stepping out of the shadows and having had to rely on the old standby of his bonded invisibility cape to manage the feat without being noticed.

“I have some.”  Teague sat back, strumming at his guitar.  “I was one of the first Brethren you see.  The only one to have gained immortality through my adventures.  They named me keeper of the Code…and I remember Jones’s tale of just _how_ he knew how to bind the very sea.”  Teague glanced up into the eyes that had dug themselves into his Jackie without even trying if Edward were to guess.  “Eyes like yours don’t come around very often.”

“Quid pro quo, Captain.”  Frey nodded with a short bow.  “Quid pro quo.  Someone helped her bind me, I helped someone bind her.  We all make choices, and as you told Jack: living forever isn’t the trick.  It’s living with _yourself_ forever.  I’ve done many things in my life I wasn’t proud of.  Serving Calypso a little of the pain she’s caused me – that will never be one of them.”

He hummed a few bars, Teague obligingly picking up the infamous tune, and Frey wandered off to find his slippery pirate captain.

It seemed his plans would need to be _adjusted_.

“The seas be ours, and by his power.”  Teague sang under his breath.  “Where he will, he’ll roam.”

…

Jack woke that night in the Captain’s quarters of the _Black Pearl_ as he felt Harry fiddling about this his hair.

He didn’t eve stop to wonder why – he already knew.

Not many people thought highly of one Captain Jack Sparrow – and why would they?  He was a pirate and a scalawag and had done more than one thing in his life to end him in a place of punishment after his death, what’s more he knew it and kept on anyway.

He was who he was.

But one thing he _wasn’t_ was stupid.

No matter how pretty or powerful or fascinating Harry was, Jack knew that part of what drew the sorcerer to him was attraction – and the rest was pure convenience – both of which were fine with ol’ Jackie.

Jack wasn’t a man for a lifetime and he knew that too.

Harry was – it was written all over his face when his eyes got lost looking over the sea towards the northern seas or stared up at night on the deck at the stars.  Whatever he’d been before Calypso had imprisoned him, there was something that had been left behind, something still missing.    Jack couldn’t help but think that it was what had made Harry a good man and that without it he was like a sky without a northern star, beautiful but with no true north.

Never in his life had he seen a person – man or woman – kill with the absent ease of Harry Black.  It was almost like watching the _Black Pearl_ coast through the waters of the Sea of Souls, with the dead parting around them.  That’s all the attention Harry had paid to his opponents in battles – they were already ghosts to him.

So the last thing was when he felt Harry press a kiss to his forehead and make off with his piece-of-eight was _surprised_.

Rather, he was impressed.

It took more than a bit of cunning to get one over on Captain Jack Sparrow, and even with Harry being honest about being bound to see Calypso freed, he’d never given one thought to _this_ becoming a turn of events.

Did it hurt?

Yes, of course it did, but more his pride than anything.

Jack Sparrow grinned into the darkness and stamped his feet into his boots, then followed Harry a few paces back, always keeping him in sight, as he left the ship for a spot in one of the secluded portions of Shipwreck Cove, no more than a little jetty of rock really.

To no surprise, Hector and Ragetti were already there, though Ragetti’s rotund friend Pintel was nowhere to be seen.

“You know.”  Jack stepped out of the shadows before the trio of pirates plus the bound form of Tia Dalma could do more than exchange pleasant nods.  “Call me crazy.”

“Crazy.”  Ragetti chimed in with a shaky smile, hands clenching convulsively around the wooden bowl.

“But I do believe you need _all_ nine pieces of eight.”  Jack held up his hands, then reached up to tug at where a coin still rested – one that he’d bet his beard was identical to the one shining in Harry’s hand.  “And by my count you’re missing the lovely Elizabeth’s.”

Frey chuckled, entertained as always by Jack’s antics, and with a snap of his fingers both broke the ropes tied around Calypso and transported the missing piece of eight to his hand.

“I _do_ enjoy you Jack.”  Frey told him with a flashing smile, even as he dropped the last two pieces of eight into the bowl holding the others.  “Though Barbossa,” Frey smirked at the pirate who was fuming over Frey’s dismantling of the bonds around Tia Dalma.  “No ropes would hold Calypso.  Binding her in her bones wasn’t as _easy_ as you lot all seem to think, and done with more than a little magical help.”

“About that.”  Jack stepped forward, even as Hector opened his mouth to give a no-doubt-scathing reply.  “I’ve wondered since meeting you – _was_ it really you who told the Court how to manage it?”

A smirk and a shake of his head was all the answer Frey gave, then relented at the puppy-dog eyes Jack leveled at him.  He supposed it didn’t matter one way or another now.  She would have learned the truth of it in the end anyway.

Jones hasn’t been exactly _discreet_ with the situation.

“I designed it.”  Frey said, even as Calypso snarled at him.  “Tit for tat.  Another told her,” he nodded at the bound form.  “How to do it to me, even gave me over to her for safe-keeping as it were.  My prison was near-flawless but it missed an essential truth – I am more than what others say I am.  Add that to my isolation not being as _total_ as it seemed and I had a chance to use an opportunity when it was presented – I merely had to be patient and wait a hundred years for it to arrive.”

“One hundred years.”  Jack blinked.  “That rather puts my stay in the Locker into perspective.”

“And another hundred and fifty – give or take – since Calypso was bound before we came to fetch ye.”  Hector commented.  “But how did ye escape to help the Brethren?”

“I didn’t.”  Frey shrugged.  “I simply made it so someone who _could_ find me with a reason to suit my purposes _would_.  The rest, as we say, was history.”

“Davy Jones.”  Calypso muttered with a broken cry.  “My sweet…”

“That you betrayed.”  Frey reminded her, twisting the knife once more.  “And gave me the only opening I needed.  Quid pro quo, Calypso.  You tore me from what I loved, bound my power and left me to rot.”  He grinned – all teeth and slightly crazed eyes.  “I merely returned the favor.”

A click of his fingers, and the pieces of eight were blaze.

Looking at the trio of pirates, who were watching with various levels of fascination, he said:

“You’ll probably want to step back for this part.”

Then leaning forward, whispered in her ear: “Calypso: I release you from your human bonds.”

A step back and the dish with the pieces of eight – including the ward-stone that had trapped him so long – were burning brightly between them, hovering in mid-air.

Smoke and vapor rose up, most being taken in by the goddess while a small inky-black wisp was inhaled by Frey before he collapsed, coughing to his knees.

Jack nearly stepped forward, eyes darting between the goddess who was shuddering and _growing_ and then bursting into sea water and disappearing and the kneeling man-sorcerer-thing that was… _glowing_?

For Frey was, glowing with black and green and purple light, the colors of his full embodiment of power.

Tossing a smirk over his shoulders at the goggling pirates, Frey let himself sink down into the shadows surrounding him, reveling in their gasps and exclamations of shock, then rising up behind Jack and tugging the cleanest-pirate-in-the-seven-seas (all thanks to Frey’s magic) back against his chest.

“It seems I owe you a bit of an apology, Jack.”  Frey whispered into one ear, power and desire burning in his veins.  He needed to _do_ something and the battle wasn’t coming until the dawn.  “Perhaps I could tender it in your quarters?”

“You won’t be running off like the goddess then?”  Jack cocked a brow at the sorcerer, whose eyes seemed to burn an even brighter unholy green in the dark.

“No, not quite.”  Frey’s eyes flicked over to the slump-shouldered form of Barbossa.  “You all helped me gain my freedom.”  He directed the words at the older pirate.  “I won’t leave you to face this enemy alone.  I repay my debts – good or ill – despite how long it may take to do so.  _She_ learned that the hard way.”  Frey nodded towards the water.  “And so will this Lord Cutler Beckett.”

“Aye,” Hector blew out a breath and nodded his head, even as shadows seemed to rise up and carry the two pains-in-his-arse away.  “That be true..”

“Captain?”  Ragetti asked tentatively.

“Our last hope may have abandoned us, Master Ragetti.”  Hector told him, then straightened and marched for the _Pearl_.  “But she left us with another in her place.  There’s fury in that lad, and I can’t _wait_ to see it levied against Beckett and his ilk.”

…

That night in the bedchamber of the _Black Pearl_ , Frey said goodbye to Jack alternating between moments of long, slow, sensuality and hot, frenzied, desire.

His mission, and he was damn glad to accept it, was to thank Jack for making the one choice that had had terrible consequences both for himself and most of those around him, but had ultimately led to Frey finally having his freedom.

Frey didn’t know what to expect when he returned to his world.

With the way time worked between universes it could have been only a moment there while he lived through over two centuries here, or he could return to a world a thousand years in the future from when he’d been taken from it – he didn’t know.

What he _did_ know was that either this world could not be accessed by his father _or_ that he hadn’t been gone long enough for Loki to be willing to risk revealing Frey as his son before he became immortal by fetching him and risking exposure.

Frey was banking on the latter after having more than enough time to consider it after he’d been pulled out of his instinctual grief after his arrival and being unable to free himself quickly.

He _hoped_ that he would be returning to a world where his children were still children, and not to one of ashes and dust.

That said, his rage still burned cold even though he’d taken his vengeance against _this_ Calypso for his imprisonment and if _anything at all_ had happened to his loved ones, Leo’s Calypso wouldn’t live to see another day, though she would _wish_ for a death as merciful as the one he’d given her father…twice.

When the others caught sight of the Armada bearing down on them, Frey just smiled as Jack said “Parley.”

“Why aren’t you afraid?”  Gibbs asked as he caught sight of the strange look on the sorcerer’s face.  “Beckett commands the largest armada ever to ride the seas.”

“Today is as good a day as any to die.”  He said, then turned to accompany the others to the sandbar for the meeting.  “And still I’ve no intention of doing so.  This is life and death for you.  For me?”  He flashed a wicked grin at the listening crew.  “It’s just another Thursday.”

“How could you say such a thing?”  Elizabeth gasped as they were lowered in the rowboat to the sea, Jack and Hector taking the oars.  “We could _all die_.”

“Correction:” Frey held up a finger, as he met a dark kohl-rimmed gaze.  “ _You_ could all die.  And still this world would not end, the sun will still rise and set.  It’s life and death for you, yes.  But _only_ for you.”  Frey turned and looked away from the watchful Jack.  “For me?  It’s one last bit of _venting_ before I return to my home, where the decisions I make _could_ end worlds, do you understand oh mighty Pirate King?”

“Are you sure that was wise?”  Jack muttered to his lover as Barbossa and Elizabeth took the lead over to meeting with Turner, Beckett, and Jones.

“This isn’t my world, Jack.”  Frey told him seriously.  “It doesn’t matter one way or another.  Though I do have a bit of advice – true advice – for you.”  He grabbed his arm and held him back, leaning down to make it look as if he was whispering love-words into his ear.  “I know what you seek.  And your father was right: immortality while hard for a mortal to gain, isn’t the trick.  So,” he shot a look at Jones, who was staring at him in shock.  “Don’t be stupid.  Don’t be cocky.  And above all: don’t be cruel.  There will be time for celebration _after_ you’ve won, do you hear me?  More than one hero and villain have been undone by gloating.”

Having said his peace, Frey gave Jack one last kiss, to his cheek just below his eye, and then stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Hector, eyeing Jones for the first time in fifteen centuries.

“Hello, Davy.”  Frey smirked, resting his hands on the sword at his hip.  “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Sorcerer.”  Jones spat.  “You _vile_ betraying…”

“Ah ah.”  Frey held up a finger with a smile.  “I believe the only true betrayer here is yourself, Captain Jones.  Oh,” he chuckled low.  “It _did_ so break her heart when I told her that it wasn’t _I_ who revealed the secret of her binding to the Brethren Court.  And,” he looked around, then up at the gathering clouds.  “Where might she be now, I wonder…?”

“We had an _agreement_.”

“And I kept it.”  Frey smirked.  “It was you, after all, who failed to bind me to inaction after I’d given you what you wanted.  And when another found my island and offered me another bargain, I was perfectly free to _take_ it.”

“Speaking of bargains.”  Beckett cut in while Jones spluttered, eyes flicking between this _sorcerer_ and Jack.  “I believe this belongs to you.”  He tossed the compass to Jack.  “Don’t be shy Jack, step up, take your reward.”

“Blackguard!”  Barbossa spluttered, whirling on Jack, only to be held at bay by a sword slashing in front of him and pressing into his chest, bright green eyes warning him.

“You betrayed us?”  Elizabeth played along, all the while her eyes darting between Will and Jack as they seemed to trade some sort of code hidden in their words.

“And lets not forget the debt you owe me, Sparrow.”  Jones growled, ignoring the sorcerer – for the moment.  There would be time to take his revenge on the foul creature when the battle was struck.  “One hundred years aboard the _Dutchman_ , that was our agreement.”

…

“Pirate King?”  Will asked Elizabeth quietly as they walked back to the dighy, less a captain and with Will in tow.

“Courtesy of Jack.”  Elizabeth told him, then flicked her eyes over to Harry Black.  “Why haven’t you done anything about Jones?”

“That wasn’t the bargain, lass.”  Frey told her with an eerie half-smile.  “And I try not to interfere with Fate, meddling bitch that she is.  Things will play out as they’re meant in the end, this isn’t my world.”  He told them once more.  “I just would like to see how the story plays out before I go home.”

 


	4. Four

** Never Piss Off a Witch-Goddess **

Author’s Note: This one is short, and as a result I will be posting Part Five: Recovery within the next twenty-four hours instead of having a several day or even week gap between posts.

**Part Four: There and Back Again**

In the aftermath of the naval battle, Frey stepped into shadows and out onto the deck of the _Dutchman_ where its Captain was staring with longing at the _Black Pearl_.

“I guess you know how to take advice after all.”  Frey commented to his lover Captain Jack Sparrow, the new immortal captain of the _Dutchman_.

“You may disparage me but you’ll never insult me.”  Jack shot at the sorcerer with a wicked grin.  “It seems I have from sunrise to sunset tomorrow to spend ashore, before going off to do me duty, I don’t suppose you have any suggestions on how I should spend it?”

Frey hummed under his breath and then laughed as the smaller man swept him into a deep dip, letting one foot leave the deck like a stereotypical maiden-fair.

“I might have a few.”  Frey told him, looping an arm around Jack’s tattooed neck then leaning up to give the rogue a biting kiss.  “And the battle managed to wear down the sharper edges of my temper.  One more day, Jack.”  He pressed a softer kiss to the rum-tasting lips.  “For a pirate who taught me how to feel again, I can spare one more day.”

“Aye.”  Jack gave him a nod, then called out to his new first-mate.  “Master Turner, you have the wheel!”

Bootstrap Bill nodded, still in slight shock at being a man again instead of some strange sea-creature hybrid.

The _Dutchman_ had a purpose again, and his son had his Elizabeth.

There were worse things than to serve under Captain Jack Sparrow until his family came to join him in his rest.

Much worse things indeed.

…

“Is he at peace?”  Frey asked Calypso as he watched the _Dutchman_ sink below the waves, the case holding Jack’s heart already tucked safe and sound and hidden on _Isla de la Soledad_.

Given that only a handful of people alive knew how to get there, it seemed the best place.

Combined with the wards Frey had put on the chest before putting _that_ into a warded case and warding the cave he left it in, it was as safe as Frey could make it without taking it back with him to his own universe.

Jack entrusting him with his heart had left Frey more than a little shaken.

Yes, they’d spent what amounted to months together aboard the _Black Pearl_ as they sailed to Shipwreck Cove and then prepared for Beckett’s assault.

But in all that time, Frey had never gotten the feeling that Jack’s heart was a heart that could be won, the irascible pirate another of Jones’s same ilk that loved the sea and as untamable as their beloved ocean blue.

Spending so much time in isolation with only Mara and his thoughts and books and weapons for company had hardly prepared him for the likes of Captain Jack Sparrow, though as he’d said, he’d been happy to know him.

Even if, more often than he’d like to admit, Frey feared all this adventure and _freedom_ had just been another trick played by his breaking mind and roiling powers.

Between the release-valve for his temper that the battles had provided and the physical relief Jack had willingly offered, he was in a much better place to return home than he would have been without getting embroiled in Jack’s schemes.

Still and all, he felt like the pirate had stolen something away from him, perhaps leaving his heart less untouchable than Calypso had once accused him of.

There was something incorrigibly charming about Jack Sparrow, and it had left its mark on Frey, though Frey had left a mark on Jack in return if the casket left in his possession was any clue.

Now Jack had the sea – forever – and Frey his world to return to.

And all was as it should be.

Why then, did he feel so… _uncertain_?

“My sweet has returned to me at last.”  Calypso finally answered him, turning to look at him out of Tia Dalma’s dark eyes.  “An’ you?  What will you do now that you are free, Titan-Slayer?  Will you make-a me pay?  Or have I suffered enough torture at your ‘ands to leave you satisfied?”

“Me?”  Frey’s smiled was cold.  “I have a family to return to.  I’ll go back to them, and one day this will all be nothing but an aside – a daydream of a time long gone away.”

“Aye, per’aps that be best.”  Calypso nodded once, thoughtfully.  “Her grudge against you was a dark one to be sure.  An’ it will only poison you in turn – if you let it.”

Frey just shot her a wink – not unlike the pirate captain he’d fallen a little bit in love with though he refused to name it as such – and disappeared with a _crack_.

“An’ what of your heart, Titan-Slayer?”  Calypso murmured to herself.  “’Tis a dreadful t’ing to be so cold.”

Shivering, for she’d gotten more than a taste of what that creature was capable of – when provoked – Calypso faded back into the sea, and thought on it no more.

She’d done her part – as she’d agreed.

What came next was none of her affair.

Though she hoped for her other-self’s sake, that all went as planned.

Otherwise, she had no doubt that the Titan-Slayer’s cold heart would be the least of her worries.

…

Stepping into shadow on one world and exiting in another was hardly as easy as his Far had always made it seem.

Frey, at least, had the experience of traveling between worlds from going to and from Jotunheim or Midgard with his father, so he wasn’t totally lost.

And with the picture of his children’s faces locked into his mind even after two hundred and fifty years, he had a…guiding light of sorts even as stars flashed through the darkness all around him as he went tumbling ass over tea kettle through the cosmos and the in-between places that were entire worlds and realms in and of themselves.

It was only a moment – and a lifetime – all at once from when he’d disappeared from what had once been his prison and reappeared in the Master’s Suite at Peverell Castle.

But the very instant his ears had stopped ringing and he felt for the lift-strings of his children and felt them strong and true and so very _young_ , the wall he’d built so long ago to protect himself from his own emotions and grief came tumbling down, leaving him a howling wreck of pained screams on the floor of his room.

He didn’t know how long he’d been… _gone_ , but it must have been long enough to notice, as no sooner than the first howl of pain had ripped itself from his throat and the flurry of enraged grief-stricken tears had poured from his eyes than a figure – so very strange but that _felt_ like ice and green eyes and home – knelt at his side and wrapped – _her_ – arms around him, cradling him against a perfect bosom that most definitely didn’t belong on who his magical senses were all assuring him was his father despite Loki wearing a stranger’s face…a female stranger’s at that.

“Hush, now.”  Loki rocked his – _her_ – son in her arms.  Her voice was soothing and low, calming, with more than a hint of magic.  “Your family has been very worried little lord.  They hired me to look after you once you returned from your… _trip_.”

The underlying message managed to worm itself though his grief and make itself known.

Of course, Loki couldn’t be around Frey or his children as _himself_ , and in the past had taken on the guise of a “friend” of Lucius’s as an “honorary grandfather” to Frey’s children when he could sneak away from Asgard or simply leave a double in his place.

 _This_ disguise was even more convincing, for all that it looked like a combination of a feminine Loki and his childhood caretaker Heidi.

And Frey understood something else.

He truly was _home_.

This wasn’t a delusion cooked up from centuries of isolation as he had spent the last months fearing his… _adventure_ on the high seas were more often than not.

Which meant that _that_ had been real too…and gave him even more things to grieve over, like his brutal, bloodthirsty actions against anyone not Captain Jack Sparrow who he’d clung to…probably because the troublemaker’s spirit had reminded him much of his father, even if their relationship had been distinctly un-familial.

“I…I…”  Frey gasped out, unable to tear the words from his mind as easily as the screams.

“Hush, now.”  Loki said, voice firming.  “I am Seneca, a mind-healer, and I am here to help.  Just, let _go_ , child.”

And so…Frey did.

Though it must be said, while the two of them survived the crashing waves of grief and heartache and well-suppressed terror, his suite…not so much as his magic reacted to his emotions and tore the place apart with the two of them tucked safely inside a cocoon of Loki’s magic, hidden even as it was under the guise of being merely-magical instead of truly divine.

A handy trick, but hardly the most impressive one in the abilities of an Avatar of Magic.

His son was _home_.

Everything could work itself out later.

Such as _where the hell he’d been_ for the last week.

…

 


	5. Recovery

** Never Piss Off a Witch-Goddess **

_Author’s Note: This is the final installment of this Frey of Asgard short story.  Up next there is “That was Tingly” and then after that comes a collection of one-shots and drabbles and short-stories that take place between “Tingly” and the Thor events “The Frost Prince.  The collection is called “How to Train Your Godling” and is ongoing so it will still be updated and added to even after I’ve finished with “The Frost Prince.”  Really, anything that fits into the category of Frey + Loki = Adventure will be going in the “How to Train Your Godling” catch-all._

_I hope you’ve enjoyed this thus far, and are ready for the conclusion!_

**Part Five: Recovery**

Loki in his “Seneca” guise that he had meticulously crafted while laying the groundwork to be away from Asgard for a time as he had prepared to track his son wherever he had been taken – and yes, he’d known it was a case of taken – wrapped soft, lissome arms around his little prince’s broad shoulders even as the magical storm fueled by Frey’s rage and grief crashed and shattered the room around him.

He’d made certain once he’d felt the heavy magic rising to ward anything his son would regret destroying later, and wrapped them in his own magic to keep anything from harming them on either accident or design.

Draco had gone looking for Frey a mere seven days ago when his son had missed the nightly ritual of bedtime stories for the first time since the end of the second Titanomacy, only to find traces of foreign magic in the nursery of his children’s room before he even left Malfoy Manor.

Clever thing that the Malfoy Heir was, he’d used his family’s ancient connection to Loki as their sworn patron to rely the news of his son’s disappearance – and Loki’s plans had begun.

The gift from Frey of the magical pocket watch that allowed Loki to know of both Frey and his grandchildren’s safety and a generalized location “home, school, work, etc.” had both reassured and worried him with the news that Frey was both “healthy” and “lost.”

 _Seneca_ was a back-up plan, a just-in-case that he’d crafted.

The Aesir had grown _bored_ of watching his little prince, though how such a thing was possible Loki felt spoke deeply about the shallowness of the race, but it was better to not take chances anyway.

As it had been some time where Loki had gone off on one of his solo-journeys, he felt safe enough doing so now instead of using one of his magical clones to impersonate him as he did when he felt it safe enough to go visit his son and grandchildren under the watchful eyes and shielding magic of Thanatos or Lady Hestia.

But now that Loki saw his son, had him in _her_ arms, it was clear that his back-up plan had been a good one indeed, as Frey was more than a little broken by whatever it was he had been through, during a period of time that unless Loki’s instincts were deeply mislead had been much longer for _him_ than for _them._

There was foreign magics still lingering around Frey, though with the faint dispersion from being taken away somewhen before…magics that read of both binding and time to the Avatar of Magic.

And _that_ explained much.

Clearing her throat, _Seneca_ began to sing, hoping that the familiar might just be what helps bring her son back from the wildest edge of grief and pain, as her mother Frigga’s singing had done for her when Oden had thrown her daughter down into the rule of Helheim never to return to her side or her arms.

It was an… _odd_ song, but one that had been with Loki many years and that she had in turn shared with her son, and he with his children.

Comforting, but at the same time with an underlying message that was rather anathema to a pair of immortal and near-immortal.

“ _Lay down_  
Your sweet and weary head  
Night is falling  
You’ve come to journey's end  
Sleep now  
And dream of the ones who came before  
They are calling  
From across the distant shore.”

Loki’s voice tumbled over the song, and over Frey like water over rocks, smooth and insistent and tugging to bring him out of his rut of grief and into a new place.

This wasn’t his mother’s lullaby that Heidi would sing to him when he was little or would have nightmares about monsters in the night, but it was just as dear – something _just_ between Frey-and-Loki, then Frey-and-his-children, and a thing he had not heard since Calypso stole him from beside his children’s beds. _  
_  
_“Why do you weep?_  
What are these tears upon your face?  
Soon you will see  
All of your fears will pass away  
Safe in my arms  
You're only sleeping.”

The voice drew him further out of himself, out of his unrelenting pain, and into more awareness.

That wasn’t his father’s voice.

But it _was_ his father’s song.

A father’s song he’d shared only with his children, not even Mara – though at times he’d thought her little more than a figment or an apparition – had heard this song from his lips though over the centuries he had shared with her all the others he knew.

  
_“What can you see_  
On the horizon?  
Why do the white gulls call?  
Across the sea  
A pale moon rises  
The ships have come to carry you home.”

“Home.”  A rough voice said, even as the words of the song continued to rush over him.  “I’m _home_.”  Taking perhaps the first _clear_ look about him in what was probably _years_ , Frey gasped a bit at the destruction he had unleashed, even as the arms around him refused to let go and take with them the ice-magic-safe scent of his father that was wrapped around him as surely as Loki’s new form. _  
_  
_“And all will turn_  
To silver glass  
A light on the water  
All souls pass…”

For years, often time beyond counting, Frey’s mind had played tricks on him.  Tricks so convincing with the use of his magic that he’d _believed_ them real, only to be betrayed by his own mind and power when he would wake from them.  Still there.  Still trapped.  Still powerless to come home. _  
_  
_“Hope fades_  
Into the world of night  
Through shadows falling  
Out of memory and time  
Don't say: «We have come now to the end»  
White shores are calling  
You and I will meet again.”  


Hope had faded in time.  It was only the promise of _home_ of meeting with his father and perhaps even his children again that had kept Frey somewhat sane in the midst of his own insanity.  The loosest, most make-shift of glues that he had to pull his shattered pieces together time after time.  All of it hinging around two things: the calendar that rarely turned and the faces in a picture-book that never faded.

  
_“And you'll be here in my arms_  
Just sleeping…”  


Every night onboard the _Pearl_ , Frey would fight sleep, going at times for days without allowing himself to succumb even to the little his nearing-immortal body demanded from him.  All for fear that he would wake…still trapped, still a prisoner.  At times, he thought even Mara or Davy Jones, the only beings he had for company for the whole of his imprisonment were mere figments.  That he’d never sent a piece-of-eight questing out into the world to be Calypso’s downfall.

  
_What can you see_  
On the horizon?  
Why do the white gulls call?  
Across the sea  
A pale moon rises  
The ships have come to carry you home  
  
And then the ship came, with its patched sails and bedraggled, squabbling crew.  Over the edge of the world it had carried him, and into the arms of a rogue pirate Captain.  A Captain who Frey now feared he had treated shamefully in his disbelief over his own freedom.  A slight he will need to make redress for…if ever he managed to stop crying and sobbing his heart out on his bedroom floor.  Jack had made him feel – even for as short of a time as they’d had in the end.

It was a gift that could not be understated considering how fully his mind had managed to tie himself up in knots of doubt and fear and paranoia, along with more than a little bloodlust.

  
_“And all will turn_  
To silver glass  
A light on the water  
Grey ships pass   
Into the West.”

Loki let her song taper off, staring down into eyes that gain clarity note-by-note.

It wasn’t over – not by a long shot.

Her son would take months if not _years_ to recover from his time away.

But the children would help with that, likely more than anything else, as would all of her little prince’s friends and family, and Loki herself for as long as the farce of her being his “healer” was necessary.

Asgard could burn for all that she could care – her son needed her, and that, in this moment, as all that mattered.

…

“How is he?”

It had been a race over who could pounce on Loki first – Apollo or Draco.

Though with his divine powers, the sun god had easily overtaken the wizard and was currently in Loki’s face as Draco glared at the god’s designer-muggle-clothes wearing god with his golden skin-hair-aura and flashing white teeth.

Loki’s grandchildren were thankfully in bed so they weren’t subject to the sight of their _Père_ glowering at a god.

“Bent, if not a little broken.”  “Seneca”-Loki told them truthfully.  “If I’m not mistaken…he was _gone_ for much longer than it appeared to us.  We must take things slowly with him but at the same time try and make things as “normal” as we possibly can.  Get him back into the routine of his family and his life.”  Loki scowled even as she rattled off her plan of attack.  “But don’t leave him alone – not ever.  From what I understand he’s having trouble delineating between fantasy and reality…something I believe you, Apollo, may be best able to help him with.”

“I can heal him.”  Apollo said without fanfare.  “But scars and echoes of whatever wounds his mind, even his heart and magic have taken may remain.”  He warned.

“Do it anyway.”  Draco told him, arms crossed over his chest when the gods both arched a brow at him.  “ _Harry_ ,” he stressed the name, reminding them that with Frey’s return from his “walkabout” they were more likely than not under at least minimal observation by either Olympus or Asgard.  “Is strong – he survived whatever happened and he’ll survive his recovery.  _We_ just have to be here to help him along.”

“Well said, young one.”  _Seneca_ slow-clapped.  “Well said, indeed.”

“So, a rotation then?”  Apollo suggested, mainly towards Draco.  He knew Loki wouldn’t be leaving his – er, _her_ – son alone anytime soon.

“Make sure the children come visit or we go to them as much as possible.”  Loki decreed as she turned to go back to keep vigil over her sleeping – and plainly exhausted – son.  “They’ll be the best medicine of any for him now.”

…

“How long?”  Loki asked her son, elegant, feminine hands stroking and combing through wild black hair that had grown significantly – far more than the week Frey had been missing-in-action – as she sat at his bedside watching over him as he’d slept after his emotional outburst following his return home.

“Too long.”  Frey managed to get out around the tears still choking him.  “So long that I didn’t believe it when I was freed.  So long that I stayed and fought rather than come home…because what did a few more hours or days or even weeks matter when my children would be dead and gone anyway?  I…broke.  My mind…”  He shifted, the silk bedsheets feeling odd and too-smooth after the cotton sheets in the ten or the roughspun from the _Pearl_.  “I couldn’t believe it.  That I was free, finally.  My mind would play tricks on me, and my power would help because I _wanted_ it to be true.  When it finally happened…”  Frey shook his head, scrubbing roughly at his eyes.  “Even when everything in me _told_ me it was real, when I could feel Jack in me or around me or just holding me while we slept I didn’t believe it – not fully.”

Loki arched a brow at the mention of “Jack” the first person Frey had mentioned in regards to his… _absence_ in the week since he’d been home.

A week that had been fraught with more breakdowns, more than a few more destructive rages, and nightly nightmares, hence Loki taking up a watch over their son’s bed.

Apollo had made himself a frequent visitor – or pest depending on who you asked, and Draco came over several times a day with the kids in tow.

Frey wasn’t healthy enough – yet – to trust himself around the children, a fact that he’d made plain by coming straight to Peverell Castle and refusing all of Loki’s attempts to move him to Malfoy Manor – and Loki had tried everything short of kidnapping or dynamite.

Loki’s son was also mum on the subject of an exact _time_ , telling Loki that either Frey didn’t know how long he’d been gone or that he didn’t _trust_ what he knew…and given the little he’d said about his magic-powered hallucinations, there was good reason for the latter if that was the case.

Still, the last thing Frey needed was to _wallow_.

Given her son’s lifespan, that could very well take _centuries_ for him to pull out of if allowed to sink down into himself.

No, Loki wouldn’t abide that…and the readings coming off of Frey as far as his power was concerned and the improved reflexes that had been shown during more than one flinch or spring away from a kind touch had given Loki just the idea of how to get Frey out of his head…and back into his family.

Good thing he knew a god and a pair of Shadow Warriors that weren’t afraid to cross blades or powers with the _becoming_ near-immortal.

…

Loki chivvied her son through getting up and dressed, having to wrap him in her power only once to help ground him in the “now” versus the “then” of his former hallucinations.

“Where are we going?”  Frey asked, eyeing his Far suspiciously.  “Not…”

He didn’t know _why_ he was so hesitant to be around his children, afraid to spend more than a few moments with them under strict supervision.  He told his father that it was a matter of not trusting his power around them – which is true to an extent.  But there was something else.  Something _lingering_ from his time _away_.

He just knew it wasn’t a good idea, though he didn’t know _why_.

Issues with hallucinations or not – and he was feeling more and more grounded everyday as the natural magic of his birth universe seeped into him, cleaning out the… _taint_ of Calypso’s universe, which had been a shock to discover several years into his entrapment there that she was the sole ruling deity of the world, that had sank into him but had failed to do more than make him a bit sick in both his body and his mind – Frey still _trusted_ his instincts.

“No,” Loki said in her low, smooth alto.  “ _Not_ to see your friends at Camp Half Blood.  If I cannot induce you to see them – to reassure both them and _you_ that all is well, then I will take you somewhere that should allow you to…relearn yourself and your powers against opponents and trainers that you shall not have to worry about _damaging_.”

Frey arched a questioning brow at that.

Given that his Sire was running around in one of his more… _plain_ , unobtrusive “Lady Loki” guises, he rather doubted that meant either the alternate Earth that his “uncles” called home nor Jotunheim.

That really only left _one_ option, an option that had him groaning low in his throat.

“Oh yes, my young prince.”  Loki chuckled.  “Your former lovers are most _anxious_ to greet you – and beat some sense into your stubborn head – in the halls of the Harvest Lord.”

…

Thanatos walked out of the shadows and came to stand next to the father of one of his greatest friends.

Loki had returned to his preferred form of the ebony-haired Asgardian Prince he’d been raised – albeit kidnapped and glamoured into – as.

In the Hall of the Harvest Lord, no outside influences were permitted by Thanatos after all, forcing the Aesir and Olympians alike to turn their gazes from the forms of the returned “legacy” of Thanatos and his “caretaker/healer” once they’d arrived with a… _lift_ from Frey’s former caregiver Heidi.

Loki could be himself here – or anyone else for that matter, with his _invidja-_ given shapeshifting abilities – as the god watched over his son and heir whilst Frey struggled to return from the dark places in his mind.

“How is he?”  The death-god asked, the phrase a common refrain now that so much had been thrown into chaos by Frey’s untimely adventure in another universe, one that even Loki had yet to hear the full story off.

Frey had returned almost a year ago now, from his – to their perspective – brief disappearance.

But the shadows still lingered, the darkness didn’t retreat from his eyes, and he still – though spending much more time with his children and his friends – lived in the Harvest Halls with Loki, whose clone was doing an exemplary job keeping the Aesir blind to his absence, the latter of which was helped along by Thor’s becoming enraptured with his own glory and spending less and less time with his “brother.”

Though perhaps what was of greatest concern to all of them was the underlying… _discontent_ that all of those who knew Frey well – Loki, Thanatos, Heidi, even his children – could sense.

A sense of something left… _unfinished._

“Seething.”  Loki answered after a long pause while Frey sparred with sword and spear against his once-again-lovers Alexios and Hector, with Apollo forcing him to dance and dodge arrows from the god of Archery’s bow.  “And more powerful than even I had imagined he would be.”

Thanatos hummed under his breath, pleased.

Anything – even hidden rage or icy disdain – was better than the broken apathy with which Frey had arrived many months ago in his Halls.

“He’ll finish _becoming_ soon.”  Thanatos told him.  “Though I doubt – given his stubbornness – that he’ll Ascend at that time as well.”

“Could it be put off, as he likely plans?”

“With his power?”  Thanatos arched a knowing brow at the smirk Loki shot him at that.  “Yes.  The only question being how _much_ of his power he’ll have to use to do it.  And the control he’ll need to maintain it.  Even so much as a single outburst of temper would free his godhood once he blocks it.  Control he doesn’t have anymore.”

Though there was no question that he’d had it before his little trip _elsewhere_.

Leaving more than one of those close to him yearning for answers over what, exactly, had happened during that time that was so much longer for him than for them.

“He’s not ready.”  Loki sighed, shaking his head.  “Not for the shark-pit of Asgardian nobility and the games of Court.  He’ll have to relearn the skills that he shed – likely to survive – whilst missing.”  Loki nodded, mostly to himself.  “I’ll see to it once he freezes into his immortality.  In the meantime…”

“More training.”  Thanatos chuckled under his breath at the refrain that had dogged Frey’s steps since he was a youngling.  “And hope he doesn’t manage to mangle himself too badly coming back from wherever he is still trapped within his own mind.”

“Indeed.”

…

That night, having made attention to the conversation between two of the wisest – if most manipulative – gods he knew, Frey girded his courage to the sticking point and stepped into shadows and from the Harvest Halls.

They thought – and were probably right – that the issue that had hit him the hardest, and he had yet to shake off – was one of a thing _unfinished._

Fortunately for himself, Frey knew – or at least could venture a guess – at what it was that bothered him so deeply and kept him from taking the final step back into his own life.

Back into a life worth living.

And it had everything to do with how his misadventure had occurred in the first place.

…

Calypso laughed as she watched Leo bobble a screwdriver at their home/garage in New York.

He’d been true to her as none other ever had – even dear Percy whose love and now wife Annabeth Calypso had cursed for drawing him away from Ogygia and Calypso’s arms.

Granted, once the gods had discovered that he had freed her, Calypso had been forced to give up her Titan powers and immortality, thereby becoming mortal to stay with him, but it wasn’t a bad life by any measure.

Anything was better than returning to Ogygia and living out year after year with only heroes that would steal her heart and giver her nothing in return to keep her company.

She moved to go over and help her lover, only to run smack into an invisible shield.

Frowning, Calypso prodded it lightly with her hands, calling out to Leo and then when he remained deaf and blind to her plight pounding her fists against it in anger-laced panic.

“Awful, isn’t it?”  Frey commented as he stepped out of the shadows, startling her into falling backwards, scrabbling only to be brought up short by the barrier – his work, she now knew.

If she was panicked and angry before, Calypso felt terror stealing her very breath and freezing her mind now at the sight of a darkly tanned Frey with eerily-glowing green eyes.

Calypso had spent enough time around the demigods and goddesses at Camp Half-Blood after taking up with Leo to recognize when the always-a-hot-topic Frey in a killing rage.

It was the eyes that gave him away.

Eyes that she’d thought, hoped, and even _preyed_ once the full-measure of just _who_ she’d taken revenge on had been made clear to her by the stories of the campers under Chiron’s care.

“So _close_.”  Frey continued, padding forward on booted feet, silent despite the heavy armor and weapons adorning his body, a mainstay ever since he’d returned from the other-Calypso’s world.  “And yet…”  He drawled, a vicious grin making white-teeth flash in the low light of the shop.  “You might as well be on another _world_.”

“T-Titan-slayer!”  Calypso gasped, finally able to speak around mind-killing fear.  “You’re…”

“Alive?”  Frey suggested when she seemed to lose her nerve.  “Here?  Bloody _enraged_?  Or how about…”  He snarled.  “All of the fucking _above_?!”

“I-I…”

Still snarling, eyes glowing with unnatural green fire, Frey came to a sauntering stop with the tips of his boots barely kissing her toes, and snatched her up with a gloved fist around her throat, lifting her without regard for her clearly-mortal and therefore _breakable_ form to bring her up to his own massive eye-level.

“Let me make something clear, _you idiotic, suicidal cunt_.”  Spittle sprayed over her pretty face even as she clawed at his hand a gasped for air – or freedom, who knew – all to no avail.  “The only fucking _reason_ you are even still alive is that self-sacrificing _punk_ Valdez has given you sancturary – and therefore _protection_ – by both freeing you and remaining with you.”  He tightened his grip on the gasping and turning blue former-Titaness as he got into her face, forehead resting against her own and mouth hissing a mere whisper away from her own.  “Should you ever – now or a thousand years from now – _lose_ that protection…”  He trailed off, flexing his hand once more and nearly collapsing her windpipe in the process before dropping her to land in a gasping-hacking heap at his feet.  “Do you understand me?”

It took her several long moments with him looming over her rattled form, dark bruises popping out all over her neck, décolletage, and jawline, to answer – even with just a shaking nod.

“Good.”  Without further ado, Frey turned on his heel and prowled back over to the shadows, stopping just on the edge of one to flash one more glare at the dazed form of the formerly-powerful creature before snorting once in derision and taking his leave.

And to think, _she_ was what he had feared in the darkness of the night.

That she might come again and send him spiraling – this time into a dimension that did _not_ speed passed this one so nicely.

It had been an irrational thing – he saw that now – even with being told by Luke and the others of her now-mortal state.

But it had lingered and chewed at him like rats after cheese.

Stepping back out of the shadows at Malfoy Manor, he changed his attire with a thought and sent his weapons to their places in his rooms at Peverell Castle with another as the sound of shouts of joy and thumping-running feet gave sound to his arrival pinging the wards that his children monitored with near-obsession.

And for the first time in what felt like centuries – and perhaps it had been after all – Frey smiled and crouched, ready to scoop them up with a laugh of joy and hear all about their days.

He would enjoy and savor every last moment he had with the three little ones who were whooping and coming around the corner straight into his arms.

After all, it had been brought home to him just how easily they could still be taken away from him, even with Zeus’s word and guarantee of their safety.


End file.
